oems 



^Benjamin ^fisfier 




Class ^_„ J_ tSlJ_ 

QmmwJAM 

CfiFXKIGHT DEPOSIT. 



POEMS 

BY 

BENJAMIN FISHER 





J9'^ 






COPYRIGHT 1921 

By CLARENCE A. FISHER 



OCT 24 1921 



•gC!.A624937 



CONTENTS 

Page 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XI 

INTRODUCTION 4 1 

A BALLAD OF MAN 7 

MORNING-GLORIES 9 

THE POET 12 

AUTUMN 16 

ODE TO IDEALITY 19 

MAYING 26 

THE MINER 29 

THE OHIO 36 

SERENADE TO 38 

MAN THE SPECTATOR OF GOD 40 

FOUR LOVES 45 

HOPE— SONNET— BRAVE HEART, Etc 47 

THE ROBIN 48 

DEDICATION OF TOMB OF McKINLEY 51 

THE FIRST SNOW-FALL 56 

THE MYSTERY OF MARS' 57 

THE POET'S RHAPSODY 61 

TO WINTER 63 

HOAR FROST 66 

THE COTTAGERS 69 

THE PROPHECY OF MAN 73 

THE SONG SPARROW 83 

THE INDIAN 85 

THE WOOD-THRUSH 97 

SERENADE 100 

THE HERMIT— SONNET 102 

VII 



Page 
WINTER BALLAD 103 

THE POET'S WOOING 104 

AMBITION— SONNET 106 

THE THRONE 107 

THE SNOWFLAKE 112 

AUTUMN LEAVES 115 

THE MEADOW LARK 119 

ON EASTER MORN 122 

THE HAIL 127 

ASPIRATION— SONNET— INCESSANT SPIRIT, Etc 130 

THE COMET ; 131 

SUFFERING— SONNET 137 

WANDERING 138 

THE POET'S DEATH 147 

THE STORM— SONNET 152 

AUTUMN LANDSCAPE 153 

THE POET'S HOPE 154 

BIRD'S AT EVENING 155 

HOPE— SONNET— THE HALTING MORN, Etc 157 

ODE ON SYMPATHY 158 

LOVE AND LONELINESS 161 

HARMONIES I 167 

HARMONIES II 169 

HARMONIES III 171 

HARMONIES IV 173 

ASPIRATION— SONNET— PALE ART THOU, Etc 175 

BILLY 176 

MORNING— SONNET 179 

NOON— SONNET 181 

EVENING— SONNET 183 

VIII 



Page 

NIGHT— SONNET 184 

ODE ON THE TRANQUILITY OF THE SOUL 18S 

THE SUPREME GOOD— SONNET 194 

THE PRAYER OF THE PHANTHEIST— SONNET 195 

REVOLUTION— SONNET 196 

THE LIGHT OF NEW YEAR 197 

THE POWERS THAT BE 200 

VISIONED LOVELINESS 204 

CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS 208 

ODE ON HUMILIATION 212 

TO THE SERAPH— SOUL 216 

THE SEASON'S IMPRESSIONS 218 

FOUND AT DAWN 222 

WITHOUT THEE 227 

THE TEAR 230 

YOUTH'S VISION 231 

NATURE'S DIVINITY 233 

DEJECTION 236 

MELANCHOLY 239 

LONELINESS 240 

THE LAST DAWN 242 

OCTOBER 248 

THE LONELY SONGSTER 250 

PRELUDE 253 

INTERLUDE 254 

POSTLUDE 255 

REDEEMED 257 

Foreword 259 

Immortal Love 261 

Redeemed — ^Poem 265 

IX 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

of 

THE AUTHOR 

Benjamin Franklin Fisher was bom at 
Steubenville, Ohio, on the 22nd day of Decem- 
ber, 1873. His father was Dr. Benjamin H, 
Fisher, a physician and surgeon who success- 
fully practised his profession there for many 
years. Dr. Fisher served as a surgeon in the 
Civil War, and continued in his profession 
until his death in November, 1906. He was 
married in early life to Elizabeth Rittenhouse 
who was born at Hopedale in Jefferson 
County, Ohio. Benjamin was one of four 
children, Bartley, Jennie, Benjamin and Clar- 
ence, the first of whom died at the age of six 
years, Jennie and Clarence still surviving. 

Benjamin's early education was obtained in 
the public schools of Steubenville, where he 
was graduated from the High School in 1892. 
He then went to Depauw University at Green- 
castle, Indiana, and pursued collegiate studies 



there for about two years. His first literary 
work was begun at this time in some brief 
articles and poems which appeared in the col- 
lege publications. Leaving college in 1895 he 
made an extended tour of Europe, travelling 
ahnost continuously for a year, giving much 
attention to the study of foreign languages 
and art. Eeturning home, he entered Ober- 
lin College where he continued his studies, and 
later in 1899 returned to Depauw University. 
In all of his college work especial attention 
and study was given to literature and the fine 
arts. Somewhat later he made another tour 
of Europe, contributing while abroad, and 
after his return, articles to various American 
magazines and newspapers. 

It was following the last tour that he seri- 
ously began his poetical work. Within a few 
years' time, although engaged in business af- 
fairs, he wrote a considerable number of 
poems intending them for later book publica- 
tion. The poems of this period were, how- 
ever, laid aside by reason of the requirements 
and time needed for business affairs, and only 
a few of them found their way into the pub- 
lished collection in 1914. 



In 1903 he made a tour into the far interior 
of Mexico, and while there wrote several ar- 
ticles for magazines and newspapers. His 
father and mother, to whom he was greatly 
attached, died in 1906. Shortly afterward he 
became president of a manufacturing com- 
pany and remained in active business until his 
last illness. 

During the latter years of his life almost 
every moment possible was devoted to his 
poetical works, and in the early Spring of 1914 
his first collection of poems was published 
under the title ^^Life Harmonies." 

He immediately set out to complete other 
works in which he had been interested for 
years, and just prior to his death had com- 
pleted for publication a number of poems and 
prose works. In the midst of these labors he 
was stricken down by a sudden illness, and un- 
expectedly passed away on Thursday, the 26th 
day of October, 1916, in a hospital at Canton, 
Ohio, where he had been hurriedly taken when 
he fell ill. On a beautiful autumn day, Sun- 
day, the 29th of October, he was buried in the 
little cemetery at Loudonville, Ohio. 

The later years of his life were filled with 



little acts of kindness to those whom his 
charity could reach. His success in business 
was to him only the means to the accomplish- 
ment of higher purposes in life. Expression 
of this has been beautifully given in his sonnet 
*' Aspiration," — 



"Incessant Spirit like a tireless goad, 

Compelling effort to unwonted trials. 
Why dost thou urge me onward o'er the road 

Of weary struggle through life's mazy wiles? 
With failures scorned and pleasures all subdued, 

I strive and strain to reach those higher goals 
Where labor shall achieve some human good — 

Some influence sweet, or love in humble souls. 
So, shall thy force relentless keep her sway; 

E'en though I lose the common joys of life, 
My heart shall triumph in some golden day. 

With lives made better through my pain and strife. 
Thou gracious tyrant, wield thy chast'ning goad 
And drive me upward o'er thy skyey road." 



Yes, — he has in truth realized his great de- 
sire,— he has left the world *'some influence 
sweet and love in humble souls. '' 



INTRODUCTION. 

XN bringing to the public this collec- 
tion of the poems of Benjamin Fisher 
there has been no attempt to exclude any 
which had been completed at the time of 
his death. Doubtless he would have 
omitted some of those here presented, but 
it is felt the collected edition should con- 
tain all of his finished labors. Some of the 
poems are republished from the volume 
brought out by him in 1914 entitled **Life 
Harmonies," but the greater number com- 
prise those never before published. 

There are imperfections, of course, as 
there must be in a complete collection of a 
poet's life work, and yet, taken all in all, 
there is shown surprising evolution from 
the poems of youth, as ^^Love and Loneli- 
ness," to those of true poetic thought and 
inspiration, like **The Poet's Death" and 
his masterpiece — ^^Eedeemed." 
In the composition of his poems great care 

was always taken in the choice of meter 

1 



and rhyme consistent witli the thought and 
subject to be embodied; and this is true 
throughout all his work, although the art 
of it is carefully concealed as it always 
should be. His poetical ideals were formed 
from a constant companionship with the 
masters of poesy; and it is impossible to 
truly weigh the influence of any one poet 
in the life work of another. His reading 
and study of literature and especially of 
poetry had been almost continuous from 
boyhood, but perhaps it can be said, that 
Dante, Milton, Aeschylus, Spencer, 
Wordsworth, Byron, Keats and Shelley 
are those whose influence was greatest in 
his poetical life. 

His was a deep abiding faith in Chris- 
tianity, and yet strange as it may seem to 
some, he was inspired and influenced to a 
marked degree by Shelley. He felt the ul- 
timate triumph of life to be the endless 
glory of love, and this, after all, he found 
in Shelley's *' Prometheus Unbound," 
'* Adonais" and in the exquisite "Hymn to 
Intellectual Beauty." Surely there is no 
inconsistency in taking into one's being 

2 



such conceptions linked as they were in 
him with true Christian faith ; and so we 
have the lines at the close of **Wander- 
ing"- 

** And all the joys and woes of men 

Poured o'er my heart to consecrate 
My selfish passion's paltry pain 
To UNIVEESAL LOVE again 
For every living state." 

And in **The Prayer of the Pantheist", — 
**0h, loveliness divine, my soul allure 
To triumph-skies and realms of ecstasy." 
And again in the closing lines of *^The 
Poet 's Death, "— 

**Thy sky-lost songs of joy and pain, 
Thy yearnings strange for perf ectness, 
Thy sighs and tears, thy Love supreme, 
Ee-echo here in Heaven's fane 
And hymn Love's universal reign." 
And finally in prose form in the Fore- 
word to "Redeemed," — 

"Here pride is debased, humility exalt- 
ed, suffering recompensed and sacrifice 
rewarded, in the vast harmony of that uni- 
versal law — "The Infinite Love of God." 

3 



The ^^ Essays on Francis Thompson," 
published after his death, in 1917, and 
modeled somewhat after Thompson's own 
** Essay on Shelley," give us some idea of 
his ability to write in fine prose form. In 
these we find the poet expressing his 
thoughts, impressions, appreciation and 
criticism of another of his kind. And in 
the Thompson Essays we discover prose- 
poetic work of no mean character, — 

*^ Thompson's imagination was fine, deli- 
cate, subtle. He did not reach the sublime 
heights of Shelley, or formulate the grand 
conceptions of Milton. He worked with 
all possible elements, but he cherished 
them for their individual beauty, nor com- 
bined them into great structures of tower- 
ing magnificence. Yet his faculty was 
quick, rich, rarified — ^his fancies evanes- 
cent, filmy, fragile. He knew the fleeting 
phases of a rapturous moment; he saw 
the vague appearance of Nature's strang- 
est passions; he grasped the pallid won- 
ders of Infinite seemings, and made them 
stay and change into palpable beings for 
our adoration. True, the high passions of 



the super-mind — the far, strange forces 
of discovery and revelation, that, in the 
absolute greatness of some souls, pierce 
even to the supernal, were not his native 
gift or cultivated acquirement. But his 
power of minute perception and discern- 
ment was delicate if not divine, deep if 
not universal, intense if not exalted." 

The spirit and beauty of nature are 
ever present in all the poetic work of Ben- 
jamin Fisher. His true companionship 
with nature seemed to have kept him al- 
ways close to God. Note especially the 
closing stanza in *^ Autumn Leaves," — 
''Ah, could we mold our sordid fate 

To Nature's sinless reign. 
Our living were a happy state 

And death a radiant wane. 
O autumn leaves, our low desire 
With thy rich lore of life inspire!" — 

the entire poems — ''Nature's Divin- 
ity" and "The Hermit," and the conclud- 
ing stanza of "The Seasons' Impres- 



sions" 



"Oh, that the full import of Nature's 
mood — 

5 



The reign of rigorous Winter, or the 
rare 
Voluptuous kiss of Summer's plenti- 
tude — 
Might be to thee, my brother, as to me ! 
Our souls relieved of rankling want and 
care 
Would thrill like harps with life's 
divinity. 
Would rise like Christ above life's vast 
despair." 
Strangely enough the end of the poet's 
earthly life came soon after the completion 
of the crowning effort of his career, *' Re- 
deemed," — the story-poem of the redemp- 
tion of man through sacrifice and love. 
This had been the work of years and he 
felt that in it he had achieved something 
worthy. Here at last — ^*all conceptions 
blend in human and divine affection, which 
alone produces earthly happiness." 

Clarence A. Fisher. 

Canton, Ohio. 
March, 1921. 



A BALLAD OP MAN. 

There's a ballad of day 

That I learned on my way 
O'er the hills and the high lands alluring; 

Thou hast seen how the morn 

Scatters over night's bourn 
Like a flood o'er a parched land pouring. 

Hast thou seen it arise 

Spreading vast o 'er the skies 
With a flood-light e'er brighter and 
higher, 

Till it reaches a height 

All a-gleam with white light 
In the zenith of all noon's desire? 

There's a song of the brook 
As it starts from its nook 
Purling down o'er some murmurous 
shallow; 
How it lingers or whirls, 
In its calm pools or swirls, 
Like a dark dream that daylight doth 
mellow. ^ 



Hast thou seen how it flows 

With a great strength that grows 
To the mighty and broad-breasted river, 

Till it sweeps far and free 

Merged at last in the sea — 
Calm in final, triumphant endeavor ? 



There's a ballad of man 

"Whispered through the dim plan 
Of the forces and soul of creation; 

When he rose from the night. 

With the birth-gloom bedight, 
But a weird hopei of life and elation. 



Hast thou seen him through years 

Struggle up with his fears 
To a day-gleam from darks of abjection 1 

Like the dawn's noontime glow, 

Like the stream's ocean flow, 
He shall merge in some far, strange per- 
fection. 



MORNING-GLORIES. 

Thou gracious gift from morning's gems, 
Thou dow'r of beauty, fresh with dew, 
No crowns of pearls or diadems 

Of fabulous price can vie with thee. 
The breath of night caressing you 
Has made you burst with ecstasy 
At day's first greeting, — lovely thing. 
What wonder in thy blossoming ! 



Does night or day or heav'n or earth 

Hold all thy hues that blend so free? 
Was e'er in dreams such beauteous birth, 
Such generous boon of smiling cheer. 
Adoring dawn beholds in thee "? 

No gaudy blooms man's care can rear, 
No visions rare his art can form 
Compare with thee, sweet bride of morn. 



So lavish in thy glad array — 

Can night conjure so rare a sight 
As from her depths leaps forth with day 
A myriad jewels rich and pure? 
But thou must die before the light 
Of noon beholds thy wealth mature, — 
With tender morn's succeeding reign 
To burst a thousand blooms again. 



We need no wealth to have you near, 

As free as rain and dew and air. 
Thy blessings come with every year 
As long as God's own sun endure. 
All summer long thy blossoms fair 
Bedeck the haunts of rich and poor. 
And lowly homes where want is rife 
Bless God for all thy cheerful life. 



10 



With thy sweet worship of the sky — 

Thy glory to earth's Lord and ours, 
We raise our silent hymn on high 
For all thy bounty rich and free. 
Thanks for the grace of thy dear flow'rs, 
Thanks for the thoughts they move in 
me, — 
All Nature's boundless store was given 
For human joy, — as free as Heaven. 



11 



THE POET. 

A radiant love so fair and pure, 

A soul astray from sky-kissed heights, 

That veils of blighting grief obscure. 

Had fainted on the midnight still, — 

A breathing song, a pining flow'r, 

A tremulous, mist-wildered star 

That thro ' the gloaming once would thrill 

The pulse of languored earth, and fill 

Its mazy shrouds with rainbowed lights. 



On scorning earth so dark and cold. 
In hearts consumed with vulgar greed, 
The spirit lost could find no fold 
Save on some tender maiden's breast 
Athrob with love, whose lips would press, 
In tranced, dreamful joy, a kiss; — 
But oh, to wake in wild unrest, 
In dark despair from rapture blest. 
And feel that soul-glow pale and dead! 



12 



So pathless o'er life's rugged way, 
Athrill with bliss or crushed in pain, 
That soul companionless doth stray 
In maze of tears ; yet e'er doth glow 
With yearning love for human hearts. 
That o'er its life-chords trembling starts 
Some rhapsody of bliss and woe ; 
Some soaring song that griefs o'erflow 
And crush its flight to earth again. 



It wanders through life's wildered flight: 
No love can touch its stilled strings, 
No passion flash its sombre night 
Where sobful silence reigns alone. 
No song doth thrill ; no tender gleam 
Of bliss and love will wake its dream 
Of sorrow. Yet it lists the moan 
Of human grief whose swelling tone 
Its i?armonies to Heaven sings. 



13 



But thro' the night so cold and long 
There burns a trembling, constant star; 
And o'er the silence black, a song 
Breathes tremulous in accents dear, 
That stricken sorrows hush their pain 
And hearken soothed to the strain: 
Cold Desolation, palled in fear, 
Did start from lifeless void to hear 
Those quivering heart-strains from afar. 



The black night wanes ; its direful glooms, 
That hung in moveless, soundless pall. 
Some fitful pallor soft illumes — 
The first still flush of dawning light. 
Soft hues and music thrill the haze. 
And life stirs from the stupid maze 
Of torture's trance. With heart-glows 

bright. 
Thy mystic sympathy's pure might. 
Like day, o'erfloods my sorrow's thrall. 



14 



Woe sinks to sleep; and desolate, 
My tired heart fainting longs to see 
Life's glory-noon; yet must it wait, 
By thy heart constant lulled still : 
And 'neath thy sleepless vigils blest 
It sinks aswoon in moanless rest. 
The grief -hushed strains thy heart-chords 

thrill 
Surge o'er my languished soul, and fill 
With hovering dreams of ecstasy. 



15 



AUTUMN. 

Thou still, dearn forest, to thine arms, 
Thine own soul-love, I come again, 
So weary of earth's loveless strife. 
So dreadful 'mid its vain alarms : 
Here where thy love in spirit-life 
Enfolds me, — ah, the mem'ry-pain — 
As she upon her throbbing breast 
In panting love, — and thou, in sorrowed 
rest. 



Thy lips are chill, — ^yet stamp my brow 
With kisses till they warm again. 
Thy breast that heaved with loveful joy 
Is spiritless and saddened now: 
Thou too, hast tasted life's aUoy. 
Thy whispered breath in scentless bane. 
And chilling might with sorrow fed, 
Eepeats thy love ; 'tis I am cold and dead. 



16 



AJi, spirit, once thy step was light, 
Thy smile and song in rapture gay; 
Thy maiden beauty Love, so bright, — 
My soul in passion's fire did burn! 
Thy beaming love glowed thro' life's day 
We severed e'er to strive and yearn. 
Ah, had I on thy pulsing breast. 
Thine own, swooned in young love to 
death, and rest ! 



Thy love-gleams that with ardor glowed, 
Too fervid in their fierce delight. 
In their own flaming rage consimaed, 
Mare feebly o'er thy charred abode. 
Thy blushful glory pale-begloomed, 
Waning and faded bodes the night. 
Thy heart is scarred with seared bane, 
As mine is riv'n with gleams of passion's 
pain. 



Thy fires burn low. In wildered bliss 
The tempest's passion-blights o'ersurge 
Thy realm, lured by thy ravished light, 
Thou passion- wearied ! Winter's kiss 
Pants on thy brow o'erflushed in night. 
Tho' sad thy zephyr-moaned dirge. 
Thro' love's night creeping from its bourn 
Hope lifts its fear-hushed voice with Joy 
to mourn. 



18 



ODE TO IDEALITY. 

Great Spirit from some realm of Heaven, 

Like the visitings of dreams, 
That comest with strange pow'r Ood- given, 
Like the lightning's glorious fire, 
Lifting on thy winged gleams, 

To far domains of visioned loveli- 
ness 
The tranced soul that in thy thrilled 
caress 
To thy dear heaven doth aspire, — 
Oh, fill our minds with high desire 
For perf ectness. 

O, mighty Essence of Divineness, 

Ever restless in thy flight. 
To thy pure spheres, unknown, confineless, 
Where the few brave souls and great 
From earth's subjecting might. 

Have dared thro' scorn and jeer 

alone to rise 
And dauntless cleave with thee the 
kingless skies, — 
Oh, visit with thy glorious state 
The souls of men, that once elate 
To Paradise, 

19 



Their eyes enravished by the seeming 

Of thy loveliness, dear Soul, 
May e 'er behold thee thro ' life 's dreaming. 
Lifting from earth-guilt and shame, 
Guiding to the spirit's goal. 

Oh, could our eyes behold thy 

mystery 
More blessed than conceived 
felicity. 
More lustrous than earth's brightest 

gleam, 
And sweeter than our fairest dream 
Of ecstasy, 



Our state, transformed with spirit-beauty. 

Then would rise to Heaven's bourn. 
Conceiving naught of want and duty 
Save to love all human-kind. 
Thou hast left us but to mourn 

Alone amid earth 's j angling, mortal 

strife. 
To struggle comfortless thro' evils 
rife. 
Yet with thy image clear, refined. 
E'er in our deathless souls enshrined,- 
Our guide thro' life. 

20 



O sourceless Majesty, whose splendor 
Grieams thro' gloomed palls of life, 
Whose thrilling power, tranquil, tender. 
Flooding thro' earth's surging night, 
Calms' the raging waves of strife 

And lights, with glory purer than 

the day. 
The darkened solitudes of life's 
lone way, — 
Thou Beauty dearer than delight, 
Thou Grace envisioned, — let thy 
might 
Assume its sway, 

That o 'er the fettered gloom of sadness 

Fostered by man's sin and hate. 
May glow the gloried hues of gladness 
Gleaming from a love divine : 
That the mind's transformed estate. 
Exalt above the spheres of vulgar 

life 
Where greed and crime and fear 
are ever rife. 
May, gazing on thy beauty, fine 
The soul whom mortal fates consign 
To warring strife. 

21 



O thou pure Essence ever lovely, 

Thou whose state is all unknown, 
Thy realm I have beheld above me 
Gloried with some splendor rare 
That o'er our state a moment shone. 
Then vanished like a vision of 

delight 
That glows in beauty o'er our 
tranced sight. 
Tho ' thou art gone and earth is drear 
Yet shall thy image glowing fair 
Gleam thro' our night, 



To point our souls to realms supernal 

From the gloom of carnal state ; 
To free our lives in spheres eternal 
From the death-bonds of despair — 
Creature of our sin and hate : 

That life may cleave of venal self 

the pall. 
And soaring with thee, burst the 
bands that gall 
With false deceivings ' empty glare 
And mockeries of greed and care, — 
A wretched thrall. 

22 



Thou Might of Beauty whom the vision 

Of the pure and great descries, 
Who, in earth-scorn and derision, 
Struggle on alone to gain 
Heights that ever loftier rise. 

As ever dauntless 'mid the strife 

and jeer 
Of grov'ling earth-desires whose 
minions leer 
With scoff and taunt upon their pain, 
Inspired that sky-goal to attain. 
So far, so dear, 

Oh, still impel them with thy power 

That their lives, on earth elate, 
Might exalt from stations lower, 
In our culture's slavery-creed. 
Souls of men whom ruthless fate 

Has doomed to drudgery, distress 

and care — 
The idols reared by Mammon's 
progress fair; 
And those ignobler still whose greed 
Would serfdom grant for bravery's 
meed, 
For toil, — despair. 

23 



Thou art that Firmless Substance reign- 
ing 
In thy viewless far domain, — 
The active Stress of Soul, sustaining 
Heavenward by thy constant might 
Times and beings else inane 

And spiritless as spheres swung 

dead thro ' space. 
Without whose life-transforming 
spirt-grace 
The human soul in fleshy blight. 
That then could see no sky-ward height 
Would sink apace, 

To indolent content, declining 
From a primal spirit-state. 
To sentient life of flesh consigning 
Beings of seraphic soul. 
Formed to rise beyond earth-fate 

And thrilled with infinite aspirings 

pure 
To climb, by thee impelled, to 
heights secure 
Where shrouds of paltry life unroll 
And far perfection's lovely goal 
Our souls aJluT'e. J^ 

24 



Thou radiant Spirit of Endeavor, 

Soul of Beauty, Hope Divine, 
That thrills our hearts to seek thee ever 
Par above life's sin-gloomed 
sphere, — 
God-created Might, incline 

Thy form of empyrean Loveliness, 
That, thrilled with radiant 
Beauty's sweet excess, 
Our souls with mighty love may rear 
Thy glory-throne, thou Vision dear 
Of Perf ectness. 



25 



MAYING. 

Oh, come my love, day's gates unfold, 

And bounteous Apollo 
Is melting floods of meUow gold 
O'er forest, field and fallow. 
We must not stay, 
We must away 
To greet the glorious suni 
To revel with the radiant May 
'Round Summer's golden throne. 



The birds intone their gushing hymns 
O 'er stream and grove and meadow. 
The brooklets ripple silvery rhymes 
To dancing glint ^nd shadow; 
The flow 'rets rare 
In scented air 
Lift up their dew-lit eyes, 
In wonder at the May-time fair 
And all its sweet surprise. 



26 



We'll join the eager, festive throng, 

With bird and brook and flower, 
In wild delight and happy song 
In every teeming bower. 
Oh, hurry, dear, 
The wanton air 
Is kissing all the blooms, 
And drinking all the dew-drops rare 
That hide in jewelled glooms. 

We'll linger in the haunted wood 

With thrushes' rapture thrilling, 
Sweet spirit-tones of solitude 
Our hearts with transport filling. 
Or on some height 
In haloed light 
We'll stand in wonder so, 
To see the earth in radiance bright 
So pure and lovely glow. 



27 



The throbbing silence rich with tone, 

In flowered wood-dells hushing, 
Shall breathe its solemn secret lone 
With glow and glamour blushing. 
The blissful day 
Of rapturous May 
We'll spend with elf and sprite. 
Like children charmed by fairy play 
In worlds of weird delight. 



28 



THE MINER. 

Wlien gentle, silvery-vested Dawn, 
Afloat on radiant cloud-wreathes white, 
Strews from her trooping splendors 
fair 
Light-spheres of flushing pallor wan 
That faint upon the pall of night — 

Like waking love that pales despair — 
And shrine the dark- veiled earth in 
light; 



The miner from the lustrous earth, 
The black gulf seeks where ghastful 
night 
Sinks dank in hideous murk that palls 
The chilly ooze of mucid dearth. 
In torpid streams of sensate might 
His form the throbbing darkness 
thralls. 
Engulfing life in cheerless blight. 



29 



No noonday splendors thrill his brain, 
No evening clouds in irised light 
Flame forth God's glory: e'en the 
flow'rs 
Their beauties blush for him in vain; 
The streams flash back sky-glintings 
bright, 
And hues and hymns earth's fairest 
bow'rs 
In vain o'erflood with day's delight. 



Down in the inky deeps he toils, 
With tireless might, — the slave of doom 
Whom wealth requites with pittance 
mean, 
Who serves the world, and ceaseless moils 
Where lurking dangers dig his tomb, 
Where danks' and chills' distresses 
keen 
Exhaust his pow'r in joyless gloom. 



30 



His life, a waste to scorn and jeer 
Of meaner souls that lounge in light, 
Their pleasures, luxuries and dress 
Supplies, rewarded by their sneer. 
But thro' divine laws' changeless plight 

The vital toil's creative stress, — 
That action-force transformed to might 

Of soul, — exalts the growing mind. 
And deepens broad the sympathy, 
Until his heart has mighty grown, 
Whose word and deed in fire refined 
Eeveals a life-nobility 
That feels, from lowly, toil-built 
throne. 
The heart-throbs of humanity. 



31 



Who suffers most shall deepest feel, 
And farthest see with eyes keen grown 
In trials severe of cruel strife : 
No shrunken view of human weal 
He holds whose mighty heart doth own 

A tenderness for human life, 
To wealth's soft-pampered sense un- 
known. 



And so, in black-sunk depths of night. 
Of labor's world he feels the throes 
Which toil has wrought before his 
mind 
To visions grand of life, whose light 
Tho' dim, yet from God's glory flows. 
Unconscious, still his heart is fined 
With mighty truths that scorn life's 
woes, — 



32 



Revealings of some spirit-life 
Beyond earth's hollow mockings vain. 
The stolid sense of dueless Ease 
By sloth close-shrunk in self-love rife. 
Inert of heart and hand, ne'er gain 
Such truths; nor shriveled visions 
seize 
These destinies of God and man. 



Yet who so scorned and crushed as he, 
Begrimed, fatigued with drudging 
moil, — 
The serf of wealth his hands create. 
The sneer of fulsome luxury? 
Ye blind ! How like a king, whose toil 
Doth rule the world! How truly 
great. 
Who gives his life to earth, a spoil ! — 



33 



A king; without whose sacrifice 
Of day's rare charms and earth's 
delight, 
Of joys of leisure, friends and 
home, — 
Without whose pains and death, the cries 
Of blustered progress' vaunting might, 
In tawdry bombast would sink dumb. 
Its glory pale aghast in night. 



What foul besmutched infection wide 
Exudes its venom 'd rankling stench 
'er all our light ! What reeking 
stain 
Of heinous self -sin mocks our pride, 
And taints with shame no pomp can 
quench 
Our lying culture's pageant vain 
Prom whose defilement slaves would 
blench. 



34 



Amid man's frenzied tmnult dire 
The uncloyed monster Lust doth breed 
The horrid sprites of Hate and Strife, 
That flames his slaves with mad desire 
To glut on human hearts their greed. 
Ye toiling brave, your wasting life 
Shall fine your souls for Heaven's meed ! 



35 



THE OHIO. 

Flow raucous and roaring rash stream 
ever gliding, 

Thy wavelets all flashing and rainbowed 
in light. 

In gloaming or sunlight thy constant con- 
fiding 

Doth breathe a great calm of delight, wild 
and wide. 

As thy bosom where heaven is mirrored so 
bright. 

The shade of thy darksome hills ever 
abiding 

Doth merge in the sheen of thy rollicking 
biUows. 

The vapors of mazy morn hov'ring yet 
hide, 

In mantles of gray, thy wind- whiffled wil- 
lows. 

Thy bosom reflecting the sky's glory 
golden. 

Thy hills and thy forests, to lustre soft- 
dyed. 

Betoken that Dawn by life's myst'ries en- 
folden. 

36 



Plow dark in thy dernful, deep glades, 
mighty River, 

Ne'er fitful like joy and despair of life's 
dream. 

Still emblem that depthless soul-flood 
lovely ever, 

Resplendent as stars burning through thy 
nigbt-air. 

We know not the spirit of glooming and 
gleam; 

Nor bow Heaven's glories that flush as 
they quiver, 

Or wane 'neath the shade of the sallows 
tbat mourn, 

Reveal, to our vision so dimmed in life's 
care. 

Or Kstless in pleasure tbat leaves us for- 
lorn, 

With eloquence, husb, like the rainbow of 
Heaven, 

Tbat Perfectness imaged in vision su- 
preme, — 

Tbat Beauty divine, for our human souls 
given. 



37 



SEEENADE. 
TO . 

Hush ! My quivering heart, my own, 
Throbs thro' tingling night a song. 
Hueless dreams of happy love 
O 'er its pulsed pinions throng. 
Ah, the wand 'ring zephyrs kiss 
Thrilling lips so pallid grown, 
Charmed star-beams blushful rove 
O 'er thy brow entranced in bliss. 



Still I The fainting zephyrs yearn 
Surging fast to feel the glow 
Havened in thy flushful breast 
Where my heart in love's sweet woe 
Gasped athrill with wild delight. 
Creeping glooms that ardent burn 
Steal thy love-sigh, — sweet behest 
Borne on dream- wings' sky-lost flight. 



38 



Soft I The languored moon doth wane : 
Plaintful nightingales are still. 
E'en the river's sobful roar 
Hushes, calmed in griefful chill. 
Dearn the mournful winds' alarms 
Moan thro' voiceful midnight's pain. 
Dream ! Love sleeps, but rests no more. 
Dream! Love swoons in Sorrow's arms. 



39 



MAN THE SPECTATOR OF GOD. 

Ah, couldst thou mount the reachless 
throne of time, 

And, with a view as broad as worlds and 
deep 

As heav'n, couldst pierce the mystery of 
life. 

Then shouldst thou learn that life and be- 
ing keep. 

Beneath appearance paltry or sublime. 

One service constant 'mid earth-ragings 
rife, — 

One being's sphere, one soul-activity 

Exalt beyond the mocks of joy and 
crime, — 

The Contemplation of Divinity. 



'Mid ages fathomless and worlds un- 

thought. 
In Heav'n or Hell, in stars or bournless 

space. 
Existence finds no loftier, mightier throne. 

40 



The Oreant Might, with unconceived 

Grace, 
Some atom of the godly essence wrought 
Into the soul of man, that mind might own 
The pow'r to gaze thro' worlds of death 

and life 
Pull on the awful form of God, whose lot 
That soul may grasp and hold, that from 

the strife 



Of earth-desires, affections, hate and fear 

Withdraws to secret realms of holy 
thought. 

There, freed from self, shalt thou inter- 
pret God. 

Go to the wilds where Nature, harrowed 
not 

By vulgar hands, unceasing doth revere 

Its God; whose voiceful harmony doth 
laud 

That perf ectness it manifests above ; 

Whose forms and tones and hues divinely 
fair 

Eeflect its worship constant, deep, of Love. 

41 



Behold the adoration of the flow'r 

That ever hues the glories of its Kliiig; 

And hear the voiceful throng in forest- 
fane 

Intone the rhapsodies the seraphs sing. 

Or lo, the softened splendor of the star 

That flames its radiance hued to Heav'n 
again, 

Whose silence speaks its contemplation 
pure. 

E'er thus should life conform, 'neath Na- 
ture's pow'r. 

To laws divine that shall alone endure. 



The soul, that atom of the essence divine, 
Engulfed in earthly dross, is crushed, sub- 
dued, 
Entrammeled by the daily-forged bond 
Of passion, want, despair and fear, — the 

food 
Of mocking vanities our lives confine 
To serfdom of the Flesh on earth en- 
throned. 
And could we, in the spirit's purity, 

42 



Unfettered worship God at Nature's 

shrine, 
Our human state would rise thro' ecstasy 

To contemplate the Spectacle of God. 
The shrouding palls of common, vulgar 

strife — 
That wreaths their blackened stains, be- 
fouled with grime 
Of mean, ignoble, sordid acts of life. 
About our narrow view, — to them who trod 
Humiliation's vale of fear, sublime. 
Become, with visioning the Heaven's state, 
Interpreting the Essence of all Good 
And gazing on the unveiled Grace of Fate, 

Transforming medimns to guide the sight 

To search the clearer spheres of radiance 
pure, 

Whither the soul, of earth unfettered, 
mere. 

Aspires to soar, from strife and dross se- 
cure. 

Oh, lift thine eyes, and with the spirit's 
might 

The Spectacle of Heav'n behold, — revere; 

43 



And with God's stars, His streams, His 

flow'rs and sky 
Assume the haloed glories of His light, 
And rise, — Companion of Divinity. 



44 



FOUR LOVES. 

My passion-love soared in the skies 

Of thrilling raptures, radiant bliss, 
With throbbing heart and yearning eyes. 

With wild caress and swooning kiss ; 
A transport rare of burning joy, 

A gushing vow of fierce desire, 
With beauty soft and warm and coy. 

And tingling glow of soul-pained fire. 



My worship-love was high and rare. 

In realms of glamoured mystery ; 
An idol lovely, strangely fair 

With charm of dark idolatry ; 
A queen enthroned in magic thought, 

A reachless image to adore. 
Divine with dreams, devotion- wrought, 

That fill my soul with vain implore. 



45 



My own true love was pure and dear, 

With thoughts too deep for passion's 
vow; 
With tender joys and gentle care, 

And trust and faith that overflow 
With floods of cheer my troubled life ; 

A comfort sweet, companion kind, 
In all the worry, woe and strife — 

An angel-soul for earth designed. 



My human love was great and broad 

And spread o'er all the world of man. 
Like angels' dreams or thoughts of God, 

And far and wide as heaven's span. 
It thrilled my life with high desire. 

It filled my soul with radiant might ; 
My heart was warm with joyous fire. 

And earth aglow with golden light. 



46 



HOPE.— Sonnet. 

Brave heart, thy dauntless strain, the 
stagnant air 
With vapors fraught, .scarce upward 

wafts, — athrill 
With trustful promise tho' the world is 
still 
In faithless boding or becalmed despair — 
Shall be my omen of life's dawning fair : 
For thy sweet harmony with Nature's 
will 
Thy light-impassioned soul doth sudden fill 
With impulse God's great goodness to de- 
clare. 
Pant forth thy rhapsodies: for lo, the 
day 
That tarried long is breaking thro' 
gloom's thrall; 
And I can see deep thro' the misting 
gray 
The azure glows that burst the wav'r- 
ing pall ; 
And mellow in the sun-flood's flashing 
ray 
The gloried clouds of grief day's 
splendor swell. 

47 



THE ROBIN. 

Up and away ere the break of day, 

Lustily hymning the dawn, 
Waking the year to the spring's glad cheer. 

Through garden and frost-covered 
lawn; 
Happy thy toil in the teeming soil — 
Robin, dear Robin is here. 



How our hearts bound at the startling 
sound 
Joyfully calling the sun. 
Rousing all earth to its thrilling birth 

When winter's rude thraldom is gone; 
Charming the day from its night glooms 

away, 
Q-lad with thy tumult of mirth. 



48 



Fresh art thou come from thy southern 
home, 
Pure as the cloud-tints of spring, 
Modest and bright from thy airy flight — 

What infinite blessings you bring ! — 
Calling the blooms from their dark wintry 

tombs 
Up to the gladness and light. 



Bidding the cold in the frosted wold 

Yield to the cordial sun — 
Tokens you bring, sweet messages sing 

That buds on the south winds have 
come ; 
Angel of life in our spiritless strife. 
Herald of heavenly spring. 



49 



Lowly thou art and common thy part, 
Dwelling near haunts of men, 

Warbling thy cheer so the humble may 
hear — 
A pleasure in blessing or bane : 

Generous bird, thy carols are heard 

With joy through the changing year. 



Gentle and pure, thy presence demure — 
Boon of kind Nature's art — 

Cheering our way with thy innocent lay, 
Chastens our sinful heart ; 

Bids us below all good to bestow, 

And love in our common day. 



50 



WRITTEN UPON THE OCCASION 

OF THE DEDICATION OP THE 

TOMB OP WILLIAM McKINLEY 

AT CANTON, OHIO, SEPT. 30th, 

1907. 

How dark with fearful, life-depressing 

gloom 
That awful day when o'er the land there 

spread, 
Like early blight and death of all things 

dear. 
The knell of our great leader's threatened 

doom! 
Oh, how the sun dimmed all its sorrowed 

cheer, — 
The night, how still and black with shud- 

d'ring dread! 
What diunb despair and pleading anguish 

told 
The whispered fate of our great nation's 

chief, 
But yesterday exalted in the praise 
Of all our mighty host I What dismal grief 

51 



Was ours, — oh, how our hearts grew faint 

and cold 
With dread suspense and woe of infinite 

days! 



But didst thou deem in death his glory lost, 
And dimmed in night the splendor of his 

day. 
And all his radiant fame, so slowly won 
Through tireless, groping years with aw- 
ful cost 
Of sleepless labor, strife and pain, — all 

gone 
In that one moment of thy dark dismay? 
Ah, faithless ones! Could you not see 

through night 
Of agony and loss death's evening sky 
Aglow with splendor brighter than he 

knew 
While here on earth ? Could you not see 

him lie 
Darkly in death, yet robed in spirit- 

light,- 
AU helpless, yet enriched with power 

anew? 

52 



Behold that day has cornel Now shalt 

thou see 
A pageant grander than all triumph's 

great 
Of our dead chief's renowned and honored 

life. 
Behold his people gath'ring reverently 
And nations laying down their varied 

strife, 
Fame's triumph over death to celebrate, — 
Of earth the last and greatest victory won ! 
Here, then, abides our chief's immortal 

fame 
In yonder beauteous and radiant tomb ; 
Here Glory shall imprint his deathless 

name 
Deeper than on its gold or graven stone 
Whose splendor white dispels sepulchral 

gloom. 



53 



And thou, majestic pile, sublime and pure, 

Shielded with silvered cloud or domed 
blue, — 

No nobler shrine shall greet the whiten- 
ing dawn, 

Through time with brighter glory to en- 
dure. 

So mayst thou stand when years and states 
are gone. 

The tomb of him we loved, — the great and 
true, 

Erected by earth's youngest, mightiest 
race 

To make immortal that sweet memory. 

Yet, if fell time might darken all thy light 

And mar thy beauty, — if strange destiny 

Could bring thee to decay, — leave not a 
trace 

Of all thy radiant majesty and might, — 



54 



So may it pass : so may thy splendor wane 
To dust and night. Then shall immortal 

Fame, 
Unharmed in thy material decay, 
Arise to flourish in the hearts of men 
While memory endures. So shall the day 
Of glory brighter carve his deathless 

name. 
On time's abiding scroll. Yet we have 

prayed 
That fate may ever spare thy beauteous 

state, 
While peoples strange, as pilgrims, hither 

move 
To worship at this shrine we consecrate, — 
A glorious tribute to our honored dead — 
Last token of our Nation's deathless love. 



55 



THE FIRST SNOW-PALL. 

In what majestic silence, like a thing 
Of mystery and pow'r, the snow-flakes 
fall— 
A spirit toiling secretly to bring 
To dead, brown earth her beauteous 
funeral pall! 
Oh, radiant token of arising life 
That once with other Springs shall come 
to all. 
When Winter's chill and melancholy 
strife 
Shall break with bursting Day's return- 
ing thrall ! 
Oh, joy to youth as fresh and white as 
thou. 
To see thee fill the air with crystal 
show'r. 
For Christmas cheer and happy giving 
now 
Will bless all loving hearts with thrill- 
ing pow'r; 
For, purer than these snow-gems from 

above, 
Christ gave to men the gift of Infinite 
Love! 

56 



THE MYSTERY OF MARS. 

Among the countless host of constant stars 
That fill our bounded universe of night, 
The baffling mystery of changeful Mars 
Evades our utmost pow'rs of spirit- 
sight. 
What destiny is thine, what being strange, 
Amid the planet-spheres of mirrored 
light, 
That circle round thee in their wondering 
range "I 



The all-pervading view thou dost elude 
Of bold imagination's farthest flight; 
And science, thwarted with resources 
crude. 
Doth gaze and guess, and doubt the 
startled sight. 
Yet, were we gods to plan some noble fate 

Of life ideal for our human plight, 
We clearly should perceive thy lofty state. 



57 



There was a time when men were great in 
thought, 
And rich in lack of wealth's debasing 
dearth ; 
When statesman, poet, artist dreamed and 
wrought 
For that ideal kinship of the earth. 
When man in every clime and state should 
be 
United in the bonds of human worth. 
Inspired with universal sympathy. 



That vast conception we can learn from 
thee — 
The highest wish and greatest good to 
man — 
For o'er thy ruddy land and banded sea 
One power rules — one all-embracing 
plan 
That stores thy wealth, create by sun and 
rain. 
In mighty works that all thy surface 
span, 
To bless thy happy race with plenty ^s 
reign. 

58 



The wondrous structures that thy realm 
affords 
Were built by creatures great in 
strength and mind, 
Where wisdom with necessity accords — 

United aim to public need confined. 
Thy people, wise beyond all mortal 
thought. 
By want and cold and ageless time re- 
fined, 
Have learned all lore relentless Nature 
taught. 



One purpose, one harmonious spirit 
reigns. 

To win for life all joy and common good ; 
To hoard the sun's far energy that wanes. 

And living waters in their melting fiood ; 
To gain from Nature ample food and dress, 

In one vast cheer of sacred brotherhood. 
In glad employ and toiling happiness. 



59 



No strife is there, no wars of kings and 
pow'rs, 
Nor famine reigns in all that realm of 
peace ; 
No plague infests, or killing blight devours 
The cherished harvests in their full in- 
crease : 
For one law rules o 'er all that broad con- 
fine, 
Supplies all want and treasures all ex- 
cess, 
The highest good to all — the sole design. 



Is this the lost Utopia, this the sphere 
Where love is law, and service — ^happi- 
ness? 
Where beauty pure of art and nature rare, 
With strifeless effort, doth all being 
bless? 
Earth yet may learn through ages of vast 
pain, 
Through war and famine, waste and 
greed's excess. 
Such glorious doom — the Brotherhood of 
Man. 

60 



THE POET'S EHAPSODY. 

On the golden floods of noontide's glow 
When the summer-glory flushed its 
beams 
And the fleecy cloud-ships floated slow 

Asurge on the azure ocean-sky 
Where their silvered sails dissolve in 

ligtt- 
On the wings of strange delight's love- 
dreams 
To the vaults of Heaven my soul's wild 
flight 
In frenzied bliss arose on high 
With the whirling phantoms' wild 'ring 
flow 
Of dreams and visions pulsing nigh. 



In its joyance fierce light-spheres among 
Its impetuous pinions whirled and sped 

While the bursting thrills lof love-fires 
flung 
Their bliss to Heaven's bournless height. 

61 



On the golden, silvery glory-sea 
By its phantom dreams inspirited 

It was wafted wild in throbbing glee 
To realms where angels' tranced flight 

In their splendors gush. — Here thrilled it 
hung, 
Then hovering waned in fainting might. 



From its wings the feathered light-spheres 
fled 
Prom the awesome Ecstasy divine 
To whose throne its gushing bliss had sped 

Of frenzied love, that, sky-lost, pales. 
All its phantom-dreams of irised light 

In the palling gloom to sad repine 
Were enthralled ; and where the cloud- 
ships white 
Slow droop and fold their glooming 
sails, 
All aswoon on even's pallor dead, — 
My soul-love sinks 'mid night's hushed 
veils. 



62 



TO WINTER. 

The skies are gray, the earth is white 
With blinding brilliance of thy light, 
And all around the frost-chained ground 
Eeveals the triumph of thy might. 
What pow'r of death and dearth is thine, 
Stern spell, to hold all nature bound 
With robes of ice in firm confine ! 



The sun's faint disc has turned awry 
And northward struggles up the sky, 
Forsaking all to thy rude thrall — 
Deserting earth's fair blooms to die. 
Oh, where rich summer's hued array, 
The green of spring, the gold of fall ?- 
All blanched and wan with ashen gray. 



Thy pigments are the frosted panes — 

Cold traceries of crystal stains, 

When heat and cold in contrast bold 

Spin dainty films of silvery veins. 

Thy blooms are heaps of storm-massed 

snows 
Of sparkling frost-stars' marvelous mold 
Enthralling earth in wintry throes. 



From gases rare thy vestments form, 
Distilled in air, congealed in storm, 
And cover all with solid pall — 
A winding-sheet for summer's charm; 
Her myriad leaves and plants and blooms, 
Where burned the sun-gleam's swelt'ring 

thrall, 
All dead and whit'ning in their tombs. 



64 



What pow'r can cause such violent change, 
What law produce such mighty range 
In nature's course — the mystic source 
Of infinite mutations strange ? 
Ah, could our feeble sense behold 
The one supreme designing force 
Of law minute and manifold ! 



Oh, could we guess the spirit-powers 
That change the mould of earth to flowers, 
The mists of air to crystals rare — 
Dissolved to spring's delicious showers! 
Life's ordained mysteries unfurled — 
How deep the secrets we should share, 
How wonderful our common world ! 



65 



HOAR FROST. 

A waif of mystery am I, 

A sprite of secrecy and night ; 

I creep beneath the distant sky 
While stars are glowing cold and bright 

The winds must sleep in sky-caves deep, 

And all the earth in stillness lie. 



The autumn sun with balmy charms 
Has upward drawn the misty pall, 

Dissolved the clouds in her warm arms 
Forsaking earth to night's cold thrall. 

The pearly dew, that moon-beams hue 

With hidden glints in mazy swarms. 



Has gathered from the moveless night 
And breathing verdure. In the cold 

Of secret morn I spread my blight — 
A bridal veil of silvery mould, 

A frozen charm of many a form 

Of crystal jewels rare and white. 



66 



The dawn looks down with wondering 
eyes, 

For when the pale stars westering go,- 
I tint their gleams with strange disguise 

And form a million stars below ; 
A dazzling fold of gems I mold — 
A wonder all man's art defies. 



Alas, my marvelous array, 

My infinite creations fair 
Must soon dissolve and fade away — 

A formless mist in morning air : 
And humankind to beauty blind 
Plod on their sightless, care-gloomed way. 



But where I hovered o'er the wood 
With loving spell and charmed kiss. 

It glows with blushes softly hued 
With crimson pain and mellow bliss ; 

And autumn noon in golden swoon 

Strews dying flowers where I stood. 



67 



A wondrous infinite array, 

A glorious bane, like love and woe, 
I blight the bloom with rare display 

To leave it gorgeous at noon's glow. 
A marvel rare divinely fair, 
Unseen I vanish with the day. 



THE COTTAGEES. 
To Mr. and Mrs. D. 

High on the hill whose verdant brow 
First meets the gold of waking sun 
And mingles its green with heaven's glow, 
There stands a white cot whose lattice low 
Peeps modestly out at breaking dawn, — 
Par o'er the city's raucous strife, 
That fetters low its jangling life. 



Tiny it stands thro' mists agleam. 

Exalt above the murky pall, 

Where whispering winds their murmurs 

hymn. 
And day's flitting beams thro' shadows 

stream 
That fitfully dance o'er garden and wall. 
With luxury's fulsome wants unknown, 
What sweet content their glad hearts own ! 



Down 'mid ttie city's tumult dire 
The husband labors, faithful, true, 
Till eve, when the sun's last gloried fire 
With crimson doth light day's funeral- 
pyre; 
Then homeward he turns, 'mid gathering 

dew. 
To meet his anxious wife whose kiss 
Soft thrills his throbbing heart with bliss. 



Mighty of heart and strong of hand. 
His power beseems a king uncrowned. 
His fathomless spirit hath command 
O'er destined worlds whose limits grand 
He grasps in his soul's wide, viewless 

bound; 
For faith unmoved in God's great love 
Exalts to reachless heights above. 



TO 



Brave with a might the fondled sense 
Of pride and wealth can never know, 
And strong in a faith no ill's offence 
Can move from its final haven ; thence 
There floods o'er his soul a cahn love-glow 
That shrines in constant peace his life, — 
A giant soul 'mid human strife. 



Yet, was he gentlest of the wise, 
Whose loving word and smile would cheer 
The heart with their tender sympathies : 
While lighting his world like paradise. 
The day-gleams of love spread broad and 

clear. 
Aglow with radiant glory shone 
Her love whose life was all his own. 



Beauty, perhaps, of form and face. 

As in glad youth blushed not so bright; 

But dearer than Nature's sweetest grace, 

Those spirit-loves pure their image trace 

On features aglow with soft soul-light. 

Ah, who so fair of soul as she. 

The child of love and purity! 

71 



Spirits, methinks, from worlds unseen, 
In tenderest pow'r their vigils keep, 
And, flushing like dawn's soft-gloried 

sheen, 
Or harmony's flow, their hearts serene 
Enwreathe with an essence sweet and deep. 
Diffused, as hues and odors rare 
And carols flood the summer air. 



Happy is he who knows such love 
As constant thrills yon modest home. 
Earth's harrowing strife exalt above 
No envying wealth its calm can move. 
When loveless and cold I lonely roam. 
Thro' night I see in trancing dreams 
That love-throne wreathed in Heaven's 
beams. 



THE PROPHECY OF MAN. 

Deep in that secret age of primal doom 
When black-robed Myst'ry from her cav- 

erned throne, 
Upreared of ebon night and palled in 

gloom, 
Her dusking flood surged dark o'er being's 

plight 
Formless and lifeless in the dim unknown 
And wrapped in sable shrouds of moveless 

night 
Sluggish with sullen chaos' torpid reign, — 
The shapeless mass of entity stretched 

prone, — 
The prime existence in the vast inane. 



In the beginning, God, the Creant Might 
From sourceless void the earth and heav'n 

did rear, 
When awful o 'er the reign of primal Night 
There burst with spirit-thrilling pow'r the 

word, 

73 



Dread with the terror of distorting f eai 
To hideous Night with ghastly horror 

stirred, — 
* *Let there be Light. ' ' Then o 'er the long 

dismay 
Of rolling earth slow moulding to its 

sphere 
There flashed the radiance white of mighty 

day. 



Prom sources by God's everlasting throne 
The forces strange, inspired with pristine 

might, 
The glowing fire empyreal bore down 
To fuse the shapeless earth-globe into 

form, 
And purge thro' rolling ages' rapid flight 
Its fluid mass, and inert bulk transform 
From crude existence to that wondrous 

frame 
Exalt amid the myriad spheres of light, 
Thro ' worlds and times God's glory to pro- 
claim. 



74 



O'er gloried floods of crystal waves where 
reigned 

Mutation dark that formed with pow'r su- 
blime 

Those mighty evolutions God-ordained, 

Moved forth, with splendor that outshone 
the sun 

With first effulgence flamed undimmed by 
time. 

The Creant Spirit; at whose sovereign 
tone 

The flooding waters that arose in might, 

Inspired with awe, turned back their hast- 
ing stream 

Deep to their caverns gloomed in paling 
light. 



Then thro' the glinting waste of bournless 
gray 

The teeming land from its long prison- 
sleep 

Arose entranced to gaze upon the day. 

And, from her exile where she crouched in 
dread, 

75 



He bade the Night come forth, with day to 

keep 
Divided reign; and o'er her black robes 

shed 
Those starry gems that with the silv'ry 

moon, 

Her attendant fair, should guard earth's 
slumbers deep; 

While o'er the day should reign the radi- 
ant sun. 



The winds and waves asurge with spirit- 
might 
Freed from their chasmy homes then roved 

at will, 
In everlasting labor, with delight 
Guideless and wild save by the ceaseless 

reign 
Of bold Mutation fitful by whose thrill 
The forces of the elements amain 
Arose, inspired as with the creant stress, — 
Vague worlds of airs and floods and fires, 

—to fill 
With action violent earth's distorted 
space. 

76 



The rocks in wondrous metamorphic state 
Assumed their forms, dissolved and reared 

again ; 
And thro' their fissured mass the veins 

create 
Of fused gold and silver poured their 

streams. 
And where the mountains rose with might 

amain 
And raised their regal heads amid the 

gleams 
Of azurd heaven, lo, their fabrics strange, 
Evolved in crystals bright of varied vein. 
To marble pure and flinty granite change. 



While Alteration vast thrilled with its 
strife 

The transformed world, the Creant Spirit 
passed 

O'er earth's bright face, and all its teem- 
ing life 

In full exuberance of early pow'r 

Sprang up in copious wealth, — ^profusion 
massed 

77 



Of thick and shadowed growth of tree and 

flow'r, 
Of shrub and grass, that earth in wealth 

arrayed, 
'Mid whose luxuriance the myriads vast 
Of beast and fowl and every creature 

strayed. 

But ever thro' Mutation's varied toil 
And sleepless forces' mingled conflicts 

drear 
There rose and reigned throughout the 

vast turmoil 
A harmony divine. — No act or sound, 
No thunder of the crashing mountain- 
sphere. 
No sough of wind, no ocean-surge pro- 
found, 
No leaping light, no force, no entity 
That mingled not its enthean power mere 
With one celestial, constant symphony. 

The waters toiling ceaseless in the sands 
With myriad voices joined the solemn 
hymn. 

78 



The living rocks, the surging ocean- 
strands, 

The rending hills, the fiery forges' toil 

With flame and thunder, e'en the day- 
light's gleam. 

And constant moans of primal winds that 
moil 

Where frosts and floods their cavemed 
homes devise, 

With stilled whisp 'rings or with grand ac- 
claim 

Intone the awful secret to the skies. 

AU being chanted glad the symphony. 
The music of the springing grass, the tones 
The forest-solitudes in majesty 
Outbreathe, the songsters' warblings 

thro' the glades, 
The gorgeous-mantled insects' smnmer- 

drones 
Hummed thro' the wildered marshlands' 

slumb'rous shades. 
The growl that frights the forest's sanctity 
All utter, spirit- voiced, to Heaven's 

thrones 
The ancient-hymned, the solemn augury. 

79 



What song do those vast tones of Nature 

raise ? — 
The Prophecy, the harbinger of Man, — 
He who, create to hymn his Maker's 

praise, 
In God's majestic image rose, a king, 
A spirit, o'er the gloried earth to reign; 
To whom all Nature should her homage 

sing; 
For whose delight yon mountain reared its 

head 
Sublime amid the irised clouds' domain, 
And glinting streams their mirrored splen- 
dors shed. 



Those trees and flow'rs where landscapes 

varied roll, — 
Their slopes and hills arrayed in placid 

grace, — 
In beauty rose, responding to his soul ; 
While myriad forms, with teeming life 

inspired. 
For his divine emotions, in their dress 
Of perfect loveliness arose attired. 
His soul was tuned to Nature's harmony, 

80 



That all her pow'rs should his command 

confess, 
And join his soul to hymn God's majesty. 



In his Creator's holy image formed, 
Exalt almost to angels' realm divine, — 
A spiritual existence, soul-conformed 
To pure divinity, — to live above 
All mortal strife of narrow earth's con- 
fine, — 
With stainless purity of mighty love 
To rise, a king above the soulless dross 
Of carnal flesh, with spirit to refine 
The passing life to longed-for perfect- 
ness — 



God ! Are we, corrupt in sin and crime, 
Debased in greed and self -desires vain — 
In carnal being's vulgar drose and grime, 
That Soul create by Thee to rule all life. 
And with divine aspirings Heav'n to 

gain ? — 
Are we, the abject in our loveless strife. 



81 



The Final Purpose of Thy first coimnands, 
For whom all life and earth Thou didst 

ordain, — 
The Spirit perfect from Thy love-thrilled 

hands? 



It cannot be ! O man, deceived and vain 

By whose self -exultation's vanity 

We mock with haggish crime the Master's 

reign, 
The consummation of His wondrous plan. 
On earth cursed with our vile iniquity, 
A loftier fulfillment shall attain, — 
An empyrean state where Love alone 
Divine shall rule the soul-existence free. 
And in our midst erect His deathless 

throne. 



82 



THE SONG SPAEROW. 

In all the world of sound and sight, 
Or realms of wondrous art, 

In mem'ry^s sphere or fancy's might 
In earth or heav'n or heart, 

I know no song as sweet and dear 

As thine, thou darling of the year. 



In warmth or cold, in sun or rain, 
Your constant spirit thrives ; 

From dawn till dark your trustful strain 
Thrills o'er our doubting lives. 

In gloom, you know the sun will glow. 

In cold, that zephyrs warm will blow ; 



83 



And from the fence or lowlv bush, 

With head uplifted high, 
You trill your hymn with blissful gush 

To God's most gracious sky. 
Oh, prophet of a hope divine, 
I would my faith were deep as thine!— 



That I could see, through all the gloom 
Of want and greed and pain. 

The peace and joy on earth to come 
In virtue's happy reign ! 

Then could I sing with heavenly art, 

And move to love the grateful heart. 



84 



THE INDIAN. 

Ye soughing winds, how sad ye waft and 
slow 

O 'er this lone height your sobf ul threnody ; 

Here where the wild, dark wilderness of 
woe 

Its tangled glooms with thy love-sighs im- 
bued, — 

Where raucous strifes of earth thy mel- 
ody. 

With scathful, venomed bane, have not 
defiled. 

Nor shall the slaving sprite of mortals low 

O'er thy long reign its mocking rage in- 
trude. 

Thou homeless, undoomed pow'r, thou 
spirit wild, 

Thou sacred voice of ancient solitude. 



O'erflush the silence with thy doleful 

waves 
And chant thy breathed dirge to quiv'ring 

leaves. 

85 



And thou, lone songster, o'er my fathers' 

graves. 
Thy requiem hymn. — I only, from that 

dim. 
Vast, vanished throng, for whom thy spirit 

grieves 
With my own soul, O forest, mighty, calm. 
That solemn guards the sleep of noble 

braves, — 
Am left, a wand'rer from a world sublime, 
A ray whose setting star yet sheds its balm 
Of stainless glory o'er the spheres of time. 

And I have come to thee, beloved soul 

Of tranquil Nature, from the world's 
alarms, — 

Once pure as were those streams that 
placid roll 

Reflecting now those sky-realms where 
doth dwell 

The Great, Good Spirit. — Thou in whose 
dear arms 

My heart and mind were nourished in His 
care, — 

O Mother of our Race, whose sweet con- 
trol 

86 ' 



The pure, the brave, the free didst e'er 
impel, 

I come from out the scorned world's de- 
spair 

And hated rage, to bid a last farewell. 



Farewell to thee, thou barren, mist-robed 

hills, 
Blue in the gathering twilight's shadowed 

charm, 
Whose sides, once chasmy with their 

bounding rills, 
And forest-heights that pierced the 

fringed sky- 
Lie abject 'neath the coarse-exalted form 
Of pompous *' culture" whose distorting 

flood 
Doth mock with strife the calm earth- 
realm it fills. 
Thou pure Ohio, flowing placid by, 
Still dost thou mirror on thy breast the 

cloud 
And arching sallow bending verdant 

nigh;-- 

87 



To thee who scorns man's ruinous evil fell, 
In whose pure calm I feel divinity, — 
Thou who hast taught me peace and rest, 

—farewell. 
And ye, swift coursing streamlets, still un- 

marred 
By hands degenerate, whose waters free 
Have quenched my thirst with more than 

fluid-draught 
When o'er my soul your purity did well, — 
And thou, dark, solemn forest whose 

storm-scarred 
And mighty grandeur, with thy spirit- 
craft, 
Bestowed on me thy noblest, best re- 
ward, — 



Farewell, farewell! I shall not see thee 

more 
With mortal eyes, yet in my spirit's might 
Thy calm, pure, noble grandeur, e'er be- 
fore 
My tranced sight, shall in its glory rise. 
And guide my dreams from earth to 
Heaven's light; 



And like the essence of a Love Divine 
Inspirited in angel-forms, restore 
My heart to sin-lost realms of paradise ; 
And 'mid the crimeful strife of man, shall 

fine, 
With Love, my soul for the Great Spirit's 

skies. 



In those lost days which thon, dark forest- 
fanes 
Alone dost hymn in solemn harmony, 
This circling land of hammocks, streams 

and plains 
Was all our own who roamed its bounds at 

will. 
To seek the savage bear that haunted free 
This very forest, where, from rocky height 
I look across the saddened stream where 

reigns 
Man's vaunted progress and its monstrous 

iU; 
And where yon crime-stained city mocks 

the light. 
And life with lust and selfishness doth 

fill,— 

89 



There on the fertile holm the tepees rude 
Of my lost tribe once pointed to the sky ; 
And there our prophets in the silent wood 
Conununed with the Great Spirit whose 

behest 
We strove to follow: for His presence 

nigh 
All-seeing, would reward the souls of men 
According as their deeds were bad or good. 
And we were taught to love all men, and 

rest 
In peace, — ^yet bravely live beneath the 

ken 
Of Him who gave all fowl and fish and 

beast. 



Then with the waning moon the pale-face 
came. 

Our sacred groves, our ancient hunting- 
grounds, 

With wily craft and lies, their own did 
claim. 

And where their feet in desecration passed 

A baneful blight and desolation frowns. 

We strove their rankling greed to pacify, 

90 



And live in peace, despite disgrace and 

shame 
Their presence brought, whose vice and 

crimes o'ercast 
Our virtues rude with their foul culture's 

dye, 
At whose iniquity we stood aghast. 



They told us of the Christ, the white men 
slew, 

To save us from despair, from sin and 
hate; 

To teach us peace and meekness, — to sub- 
due 

In tolerance, our wills to destiny. 

We trusted. But their greed insatiate 

Despoiled our forest- wilds, our holms and 
streams ; 

Destroyed our peace, and taught us to pur- 
sue 

Their ways befouled with self's iniquity. 

They lied, deceived, whose pledges false 
and schemes 

Our tribe impelled to desperate misery. 

91 



Their armies swarmed about us. We were 
slaves 

In our own homes and lands, — possessions 
fair 

Where quenchless lust and cruelty our 
graves 

In ruthless fate prepared. O 'er God's do- 
main 

We wandered from the scene of life's de- 
spair, — 

Far from our loved abodes, our streams 
and hills. 

Our sacred solitudes, our forest-caves, 

To distant hunting-grounds where naught 
could stain. 

With culture's greedful crimes and thou- 
sand ills 

Of Despot-Serfdom, Nature's hallowed 
reign. 



But like vindictive doom they followed 
near. 

Beneath the grasping might of glutton- 
foes 

92 



We saw our homes, our hopes and ail 

things dear, 
Our lives, our race ravaged in heinous 

waste. 
Then, with a mighty hate conceived of 

woes, 
Of broken faith, of hunger and despair. 
Implacable as doom that knew no fear, 
Our rage we sated by our slaughter vast : 
Our fury gorged on blood no foe did spare. 
We slew, we bled, we died, — ^but undis- 

graeed. 



Ah, was I dreaming thro' the evening 
hour?— 

O Spirit Great, how fallen are thy sons ! 

How crushed, how vanished is their an- 
cient pow'r, — 

The mighty and the brave, the pure and 
free, — 

Their race as ancient as yon stream that 
runs 

And silvery gleams of melting day out- 
flings, — 



Here primal born where Nature's spirit 

pure 
Attunes the soul to Heaven's harmony, — 
Far nobler than the loftiest race of kings, 
And braver than their mightiest progeny ! 



Ye feeble slaves of these degenerate days, 
Ye sordid serfs of mean age ye defile, 
Whose false refinement ye, base fawners, 

praise, 
My soul whose hopes with my race ye have 

slain — 
The pure, the noble — scorns your venomed 

guile. 
Your selfishness, impurity and vice ! 
It loathes your cultivation's vile disease 
That teaches all the infected greed of gain ; 
That sells your brothers' lives for avarice ; 
That fouls your souls with myriad sins' 

black stain; 



That forces half your sons to drudge and 

moil, 
And give their lives of shame and misery, 

94 



Degraded, pleasureless, for them to toil 
Whose glutton-greed cloys on the lives 

they enslave; 
That mocks at merit, truth and bravery. 
And scorns with shame's reward the pure 

and good! 
Arise, ye slaves ! The ground ye now defile 
With hollow mockeries from Virtue's 

grave, 
With venal lusts' hypocrisy to God, 
Was hallowed by the mighty, noble brave. 

O Mother of the Brave, bewail with me 
My vanished race, — the lost, forgotten 

throng 
Thy spirit sweet, in nurture pure and free, 
Instructed deep in life's mysterious truth : 
For here upon their graves thy solemn 

song 
Bemoans, in their dark fate, thy reign 

o'erthrown 
By mocking earth devote to vanity. 
Yet in those realms above earth-hate and 

ruth, 
Those happy hunting-grounds — the 

Spirit's throne — 



Their souls are wand 'ring in eternal 
youth. 



And I, — the last, the lonely, — at thy call, 
Great, Good Spirit, by whose sovereign 

pow'r 
My race arose in majesty to fall 
Before these hordes that scorn their wild 

despair, 
Shall leave this bright domain — ^my 

mighty dow'r — 
Unsung, unmourned by loveless hearts 

and cold. 
O Great Earth-Spirit, hear my last fare- 
well! 
Ye Solenm streams, ye hills and fallows 

fair, 
Ye gorges wild, ye noble forests old, 
Farewell, farewell, — I ne'er shall see thee 

more ! 



THE WOOD-THEUSH. 

Thou tremulous voice of sacred solitude — 

Thou soul of Nature's life, 
How thrills thy rapturous song the 
list'ning wood 
And charms to wonder all my selfish 
grief ! 
No sound on earth as rich and pure as 
thine, 
As free from pain and strife ; 
Some passion rare, some lofty theme 

divine 
Inspires thy tranquil soul with solemn 
mood. 

Oh, I could wish that angels' songs might 
be 
Ethereal as thine, 
For in the secret of thy ecstasy 

Throbs all the beauty of some God-like 
pain — 
Some myst'ry deep to blinded mortals dim, 

But full of Heav'n's design, 
In haunted woods enchanted by thy hymn, 
So wonderful, so near divinity. 

97 



The dewy dawn in mystic bow'rs of green 

Scarce stirs the waiting air, 
When o'er the pulse of morn thy tones 
serene 
Gush trembling like some heart's 
emotion rare. 
The tender Silence throbs through all its 
soul 
Thy rhapsody to hear, 
And Echo wakes her richest chords to call 
The woodland sprites to worship with thy 
strain. 

When Zephyr breathes his cool, caressing 
spells 
O'er bow'rs of paling light, 
And charming Glamour day's commotion 
stills 
With fancies soft and whispers of the 
night. 
From secret depths of some melodious 
wood 
Thy vibrant music's flight. 
In strains of magic minor soft-subdued. 
The phantomed gloom with quiv'ring 
transport thrills. 



Oh, fresh and tender as the morn of May 

Enravished with thy song ; 
Profound and mystic as the twilight gray 
That lingers where thy thrilling 
raptures throng ; 
Tranquil as the trembling flow'rs aswoon 

In silent sorcery hung! — 
All nature hushes when thy liquid tune 
Pours mellow floods of worship to the day. 



Seraphic minstrel, messenger benign, 

In secret realms apart, 
An echo of some primal hymn divine, 
A rare and haunting wraith of Nature's 
heart, — 
My spirit quiv'ring on the vibrant flow 

Of thy celestial art. 
Yearns with thee through life's forest 

gloom and glow 
To worlds where skies of fadeless beauty 
shine. 



99 



SERENADE. 

Arise to her heart, sweet song, 
Tender as night's holy passion: 
Tremble and hover like cherubs above her. 
Whisper all gently, *'I love her, I love 
here- 
in accents the angels might fashion. 
Oh, breathe to my fair 
My yearning despair — 
Arise to her heart, sweet song. 



Enfold all her sense, sweet dream, 
Soft on the night-air a-thronging; 
Quiver and linger, pale forms, while I sing 

her 
Ardent desires of the worship I bring 
her — 
Pure visions of infinite longing. 
Oh, throng her charmed sleep 
With thoughts pure and deep — 
Enfold all her sense, sweet dream. 



100 



Imbue all her soul, sweet love, 
Charming with blissful emotion; 
Sweeter and stiller than visions that thrill 

her, 
Deep with thy ravishing witchery fill 
her — 
Pair Goddess of mystic devotion. 
Entice and inspire 
With love's magic fire — 
Imbue all her soul, sweet love. 



101 



THE HERMIT.— Sonnet. 

In olden times now dim with glamour's 
charm, 
The hermit, hidden in his lonely cell, 
Renounced the world and all its sin and 
harm 
And lost his soul in Nature's healing 
spell. 
There, free from grief and hate and 
strife's alarm. 
The holy peace and contemplative zeal 
His being to a blessed state transform. 
And passion's blight in solitude doth 
heal. 
Thus might I dwell in Nature's own 
caress, 
Par from the crime and wrong of 
modern life. 
No more to silent mourn the poor's 
distress, 
Nor curse the greed of wealth and sordid 
strife ; 
Like tempted Christ, with Spirit-pow'r 

renewed. 
Should I return to point the world to good. 

102 



WINTER BALLAD. 

There is snow on the hills, 

There is ice on the rills, 

And the pine trees with frost-fringe are 

hoary: 
There is light in the sky 
And the flood-glows on high 
Strew the scene with a glistening glory. 



There's a gleam on the rocks 
Where the stream laves its locks 
With dashes and spray-glints of bright- 
ness: 
There's a mantle soft-blown 
O'er the fields and the town 
That turns all the gloom-shades to white- 
ness : 

All my soul feels the balm 

Of the white, moveless calm 

As I gaze mute in wonder appealing ; 

With the glories serene 

Brooding far o'er the scene 

To my heart a deep import revealing. 

103 



THE POET'S WOOING. 

Come, dearest, with me. 
There's a bright reahn divine — 
A heav'n of love where thy lone soul and 
mine, 
O'er the glad summer-sea 
Of our dream-rhapsody 
Are wafted in wavering joys, or recline 
On delight's throbbing breast 
In a wild, joyous rest. 



Come, fairest, with me. 
Par away we will fly 
From earth's baneful glooms to yon 
glorious sky, 
Where the radiance rare 
Of a spirit-light fair 
In a rapturous flood pours a lustre on 
high; 
And its throbbing delight 
Thrills our hearts with love's might. 



104 



Come, sweetest, with me. 
Let us haste soft away : 
Our pinions of joy earthly fetters delay. 
There in love pure and free 
We shall roam joyously. 
Softly glowing in endless delight blushful 
May 
Weaves of Beauty's sweet flow'rs 
Our entrancing love-bow 'rs. 



Come, darling, with me. 
To our far world benign 
All Loveliness, Beauty and Music Divine 
Softly call us. We 'U flee 
Wafted e'er on Love's sea 
To yon kingless sphere where our lone 
hearts entwine 
In delight wild, supreme 
Of our love's fadeless dream. 



105 



AMBITION.— Sonnet. 
The drowsy muses wake not with morn's 
beams 
Sullen with sated Smnmer 's languid sigh ; 
The dawning 's splendor and noon's 
dazzling sky 
Have passed, like joy, into the poet's 

dreams, 
And Time with leaden shackles, gray- 
gloomed, seems 
To chain the winged soul to pine and die 
'Mid drooping dreams of lost, wild 
majesty 
Where, glory-tinged, its sky-kissed man- 
sion gleams. 
Yet shalt thou pine, O h^art, in sorrow 
dire?— 
As yon hued star dispels the wreath- 
ing blight, 
The glowing ardor of inspired desire 
Shall flame the glooms thy soul's pure 
star benight ; 
Shall rend its shrouds and fuse in fining 
fire 
The pall that surges round thy spirit's 
flight. 

106 



THE THRONE. 

Once thro' love's noontide I was dreaming 

Wlien the glowing spheres of gold, 
Their mellow flush in splendor gleaming, 
Steeped in rainbowed floods that fold 
Their troopings warm as summer 

dreams 
About my tranced heart that seems 
'Neath Heaven's stainless glory lulled 
To passionate repose, where rolled 
The mystic flows of sky-hued streams. 



Par thro' the throngs of splendors teeming 

O'er the marge of flooding day. 
My wafted soul aswoon or dreaming 
Heard some wondrous spirit-lay 
That quivered thro' the irised light 
Its thrills of strange soul-startling 
might. 
As joys some forlorn heart astray 
Flush o'er when dawning 's pallor gray 
Breaks thro' th^ pall of paling night. 

107 



The orbed worlds of glory streaming 
Merged their floods of fused glows, 
And voiceful strains of radiance hymning 
Pulsed their harmonies that rose 

With tremblings thro ' the tranced air, 
And flushing, thrilled its slumbers 
fair; 
As when some tide of bliss o'erflows 
The deeps of peaceless life's repose 
And frights the triumph of despair. 



Amid the dulcet strains, soft theming 

Raptured tremors of delight. 
My soul, itself in Heaven deeming 
Started at the mystic sight ; 
For seraph-souls whose pinions shone 
With liquid gold, a beauteous throne 
Did rear ; while sphered glowings , 

bright. 
Flushed mellow with some tender might, 
Soft floods of rhapsodies intone. 



Each spirit, some earth-soul beseeming. 
Erst uncrowned 'mid earthly scorn, 

108 



Effulgent in sky-raptures gleaming, 
Glory's radiant throne adorn. 
The vassals of earth-pow'r and fame, 
Of pompous wealth or honored name. 
With that rapt throng on Heaven's 

bourn 
Could mingle not, whose souls did yearn 
With lust and greed in rankling flame. 



But o'er those blissful forms e'er stream- 
ing 
Mystic phantom-beings gush. 
Like happy, fleeting visions teeming 
In dream-magic's tender blush; 
Transformed from earthly deed or 

dream, 
Their empyreal glory-gleam 
Wreathed round those seraph-bands its 

hush; 
While guardian spirit-raptures flush 
That lustre-fashioned throne 
supreme. 



109 



And some there were 'mid that throng 
seeming 
Lives I knew in earthly days, 
Tho' lowly born, yet paltry deeming 
Wealth and pow'r, desire and praise; 
And many poor and meek unknown, 
Whose soTils e'er heard the creature's 
groan, 
And yearnings vain to Heaven raise 
For human wrongs and griefs that maze 
The sin-darked earth in wail and 
moan. 

With tear-gems dark now lustrous beam- 
ing, 
Brighter than the sun-flamed dew; 
With sighs of pain enraptured hymning 
Strains that earth-forms would endue 
With dreams divine ; with looks of 

pain 
The soul in anguish uttered vain. 
That glories tint with fairest hue ; 
With pure love-dreams and longings 
true, 
Those builders reared Love's holy 
reign. 

110 



And when the King, His sky-throne 
gleaming, 
Shrined in stainless radiance white, 
Ascended in hned splendors streaming 
Flaming wide o'er earth's tinged night, 
I joined that seraph glory-train 
Whose raptures thrilled the triumph- 
strain 
'Mid worlds attime with ravished 

might : 
'^ Great King of Glory, Pow'r and 

Light, 
Great God, thou Love Eternal, 
reign." 



ill 



THE SNOWFLAKE. 

Oh, delicate creature 
Of marvelous feature, 
What mist-molding spirits 
Have had thee in thrall ! 
What wild pain and gladness, 
What ravishing sadness. 
What beautiful madness 
Are told in thy fall ! 



Oh, filmy and dainty, 
Thy form carved so quaintly. 
Thy mystic design from 

The stars took its form. 
The frost's biting kisses, 
The wind's giddy blisses. 
The storm's rude caresses 

Have lent thee thy charm. 



112 



Prom clouds dark and whirling, 
In tempest wild swirling, 
Like beauty from darkness, 
Like Spring's radiant birth, 
A scintillant flurry, 
A crystal- white glory, 
A mist- j ewel hoary, 

Thou floatest to earth. 

Oh, miracle dazing. 
With marvel amazing, 
No flow'r in the forest. 

No gem in the mine. 
In infinite wonder, 
So fleeting and tender, 
So subtle in splendor, 

Is half so divine. 

What forces have wrought thee. 
What power hath brought thee. 
Thou dazzling spear-cluster. 

Thou flow'r-bride of air, 
So silently flying, 
So multiform lying. 
So fugitive, dying. 

In starry despair I 

113 



Could knowledge discover 
These forces that hover 
In common existence 

Of snowflake or flow'r, 
Could science expound us 
This spirit around us, 
These laws that surround us, 

Their purpose and pow'r! 



But vain is our scheming. 
And empty our dreaming; 
Our strong reason faints 

At celestial design. 
Oh, beauty external, 
Oh, vision supernal, 
Eeveal the eternal. 

And make us divine ! 



114 



AUTUMN LEAVES. 

So low and still among the grass 
You lie in moveless death, 

Scarce stirring when the breezes pass 
With chill and hoary breath : 

What cruel fate has laid you low, 

All prostrate in your gorgeous woe ? 



When Spring flushed all the wintry wold 

With breath of scented air. 
And spread her shining garments' gold 

O'er earth-glooms dulled and bare. 
You woke to life, so pure and fresh, 
A-quiver with the dawning 's blush. 



Oh, could this vital, ardent spring. 
When thrilling sap gushed forth 

Through all your tingling veins to sing 
The wonder of your birth, 

Still cherish you so sweet and rare, 

So young and green and ever fair ! 

115 



What joy was yours, what daylight cheer, 

And stir of balmy night! 
What happy songsters caroled clear 

Their gnshings to the light ! 
What zephyrs hush with lang'rous kiss 
Would wanton o'er your trembling bliss! 



In radiant, voluptuous June, 

What lovers aimless led. 
In luscious phrases soft commune 

Beneath your envious shade ! 
What teeming, soaring, humming life 
You saw through lavish summer rife ! 



I too, perhaps, when wand 'ring lone 
Through solemn forest way. 

Would listen to your rustling tone 
Melodious breezes play. 

And here, at last, with life outworn, 

Your fallen grace I lowly mourn. 



lie 



Yet, doomed to such a splendid death 
Deep-hued in lustrous pain, 

Sad Autumn tints with magic breath 
Your pall of crimson wane. 

Majestic in your fall sublime, 

I love you more than in your prime. 



O tender life, there was a day 
When youth was ever mine ; 

When throbbing gush of generous May 
Breathed out its soul divine : 

But summer came — the golden joy 

And fullness of the noon's alloy. 



And now life's Autiunn slowly comes 

With mist^ upon the hill, 
With blighting frosts and wintry dooms 

That summer music still. 
Oh, will the joy and love and strife 
With mellow glory tinge my life ? 



117 



Ah, could we mould our sordid fate 
To Nature's sinless reign, 

Our living were a happy state 
And death a radiant wane. 

O autumn leaves, our low desire 

With thy rich lore of life inspire ! 



118 



THE MEADOW LAEK. 

Gray-robed dawn with fingers airy 
Scarce has touched the misty hill, 

Nor the sun with faint smiles cheery 
Burst the shroud of wintry chill, 

Till I hear thy carol high 

Whistling to the March-gloomed sky. 
Softly waking, sweetly breaking 
Sleep of bud and frost of rill. 



Through the cheerless shroud of morning. 
Prom the dewy meadow still. 

Sounds thy flute-like note of yearning 
For the summer's generous thrill. 

In your wavy, rolling song. 

Like the hills you skim along, 

Naught of sorrow for the morrow 
Mars the Joy with taint of ill. 



119 



All the warmth of balmy May-time, 
All the bliss of flow'rs and nest, 

Loves through all the summer daytime 
Swell thy throat and thrill thy breast. 

N'o regret for autumn grief, 

Summers gone, or fallen leaf : 

All thy singing, flowing, ringing. 
Hymns the future's glad behest. 



Tell me all that nature taught thee. 

In thy tonef ul whistling bright ; 
Man's vain care and strife have brought 
me 
Naught but bitterness and blight. 
All his empty knowledge fails, 
All his vaunted greatness pales 

At thy singing, blithely winging, 
Happy in the gloom or light. 



120 



still pour out o 'er field and fallow 
Silvery peals of guileless art, 

Till our sodden senses hallow 
All thy meaning in our heart. 

Flood the world with song benign 

Till our thoughts are pure as thine : 
Nature's blessing, sweet expressing, 
To our sordid souls impart. 



121 



ON EASTER MOEN. 

When the radiant streams of golden 
splendor 
Melted in flames o'er the dawning 's 

And the sun-floods first lustres flooding 
tender 
Glistened from dew-gems afire with 
day; 

And the star-spheres, their pallid glint- 
ings, beaming 
Sky-realms with silver their gold adorn,- 
All the tranced delights of God's worlds 
gleaming 
Fuse in the glory of Easter Morn. 

In the sun-floods o'er sea and city 
streaming 
Thrilling the warm-flushing morn with 
cheer, 
Thro' the shimmering streets whose man- 
sions, gleaming, 
Mirrored the sun-flames in dazzlings 
clear, 

122 



In apparel all gorgeous, throngs were 
wending, 

Garish and flashing their proud display, 
In luxuriant pageants costly blending 

Sumptuous vanities' pomp with day. 



In a flourish to church they flutter 
proudly, 
Flaunting their elegance hued in morn. 
To exalt with their mocking praises 
loudly 
Jesus, the King of the World, they 
scorn. 



When they reach the great structure, 
august, mighty, 
Eeared with their fabulous wealth's 
excess, — 
By the stately bronze doors in day flashed 
lightly, 
Wrought in elaborate gracefulness 



123 



With inspirited scenes from Jesus' 
wanderings, 
Lost in the darkness of life's grief -maze, 
Whom the minions of Self in their meagre 
pond 'rings 
Serve as their church-god with deedless 
praise, — 



On the steps was a formless mass seen 
crouching, 
Mingling its gloom with the golden 
glow; 
And the faces of mother and babe seemed 
watching 
Pageants of splendor that mocked their 
woe. 



'Mid the sneers and rebukes of Christians 
godless. 
Moveless the culprits their scorn defied : 
For grim Death glared from eye-balls 
ghastly, bloodless, 
Gloating his lusts o'er their lives 
mocked with pride. 

124 



What hollow farce of praise, O God, 
To taint thy love with pride and state. 

While Demon- Woes, at Wealth's chill nod. 
Their orgies hold with Death and Fate ! 



Dread Death ! Thou are the Sprite of 
Hell 
To hearts spoil-gorged from human 
strife : 
How hideous, thou life's horror fell 
To lust of eyes and pride of life ! 



But, ah, to grief -crushed souls thou art 
God's Angel dear of Peace and Love, 

So tender to the woe- worn heart 
Thou leadest to thy King above. 



Oft have I felt thy gentle arms 
Around me, looked into thine eyes, 

And, hid from mocking life's alarms, 
I rested borne toward paradise. 



125 



And thou didst love me, for thy face 
Was wreathed in tender looks of woe; 

And o'er my anguished heart thy grace 
Flushed first the thrill of Heaven's 
glow: 



And, folded to thy panting breast, 
I wooed thy smiles with fond implore, 

And borne aswoon to realms of rest. 
The Mystery of Life seemed o'er. 



Thou Seraph of our destined years. 
How gently dost thou lead us on 

Prom woes to throned kingless spheres 
Enwreathed in lights of Heaven's 
Dawn, 



Whose splendors stream from flooding 
Morn 

That burst thy prison-pall of night; 
And Heaven's deathless glories throne 

Our King enshrined in Love and Light ! 



126 



THE HAIL. 

While man on his earth, in plenty or 
dearth 
Is struggling all stolid and blind, 
Lo, here in the sky I am forming on high 
In cloud-storms and wind-wrath en- 
twined. 



The daemons of storm all the sky-robes 
transform, 
And the globules of fog and of cloud 
All gather and swarm 'neath the wind's 
chilly charm, 
Till the rain-drops descend from the 
shroud. 



All downward "they plunge till in their 
wild lunge 
They reach the weird region of frost, 
Where cold's mystic Sprite, with wand of 
strange might 
Congeals all their hurrying host. 

127 



And thus I am made, in a dazzle arrayed, 
And I crash through the thick rolling 
mist; 
But the wild winds amain rushing upward 
again. 
With a force that no earth-bonds re- 
sist, 



Hurl me swiftly on high through the 
storm-darkened sky, 

And the vaporous atoms of air 
I grasp and I hold till the rigorous cold 

Freezes all in my arms cold and bare. 



Through the vortex I whirl, seething out 
of the swirl, 
Till I pour o'er the storm's raging 
bound; 
And the winds rushing by let me drop 
from on high. 
And I plunge and I pitch to the 
ground. 



128 



Through the tree-tops I crash, on the 
house-roof I clash, 
And I startle with rattle and roar 
All that dwell on the earth, with my bois- 
terous mirth, 
When my frantic, mad journey is 



o'er. 



From my wild life on high here I silently 
lie. 
By a wonder of wind- wrath designed ; 
While man on his earth, in plenty or 
dearth, 
Was struggling all stolid and blind. 



129 



ASPIRATION.— Sonnet. 

Incessant Spirit like a tireless goad, 

Compelling effort to unwonted trials, 
Why dost thou urge me onward o'er the 
road 
Of weary struggle through life's mazy 
wiles ? 
With failures scorned and pleasures all 
subdued, 
I strive and strain to reach those higher 
goals 
Where labor shall achieve some human 
good- 
Some influence sweet, or love in humble 
souls. 
So, shall thy force relentless keep her sway ; 
E'en though I lose the common joys of 
life. 
My heart shall triumph in some golden 
day. 
With lives made better through my pain 
and strife. 
Thou gracious tyrant, wield thy 

chast'ning goad 
And drive me upward o'er thy skyey 
road. 

130 



THE COMET. 

Mysterious wanderer through bournless 
space, 
Creation sourceless in thy wondered 
flight, 
Prodigious giant of the planet race, 
My thoughts of thee are vast as thine 
own night. 
What mystic pow'r impels thy trackless 

way 
Through sun's and systems' infinite 
array? 



On boundless path with speed's amazing 
might 
Thou soarest past the circling planet- 
spheres ; 
Thy fiery train of fuming, seething light, 
A monster huge, the depthless heaven 
blears 
With gassy dust repellent to the sun 
That draws thee round her on thy sweep- 
ing rim. 

131 



Thy mass stupendous swings beyond the 
bound 
Of Neptune's farthest orbit black and 
cold, 
To where some undreamed spheres' 
eternal round 
Compels thy viewless flight to realms 
untold; 
While through thy million miles of reek- 
ing form, 
By nameless essence fired, thy atoms ' 
swarm. 



A thousand years on one relentless course. 

Above the circuit of the rolling worlds, 

Thou plungest on impelled by furious 

force 

That all thy fuming bulk forever hurls 

Through wheeling orbs that float in grand 

array 
In widening arcs to bourns of sunless day. 



132 



From distant realms thou glarest on the 
swarm 
Of whirling spheres. Thou sweepest 
past the earth 
In borrowed splendor pale ; the glowing 
form 
Of radiant Venus, and the ruddy girth 
Of ancient Mars ; while farther 'neath thy 

plane 
Flames giant Jupiter with star-like train, 



And fires with bursting rage the reeking 
pall 
Of struggling fumes that seethe in 
frenzied ire. 
Majestic Saturn sinks his rolling ball 
In surging seas of glowing, vaporous 
fire, 
Where circling moons from banded clouds 

arise 
And strew their glory o'er the mirrored 
skies. 



133 



Oh, could we journey with thee 'round the 
spheres 
Of solar marvels scattered through the 
sky 
Ineffable, that vast creation rears, 

Wonders on wonders, till our spirit's eye 
Beheld the Might that made them roll and 

shine— 
Our feeble souls would rise to heights 
divine I 



Behind eternal worlds we should behold 
One law, immutable, inflexible, 

That rules the universe with reign as old 
As prime Conception's plan inexorable : 

One Force supreme — the Lord of space 
and time, 

The Sway of systems and of suns sublime. 



134 



Debase Him not to share your vulgar 
states, 
In groveling greed and sin of life 
profane ; 
The God that universal Law creates 

Is far above your trifling baubles vain. 
Degrade Him not to all your paltry cares, 
Nor make him servile to your vile affairs. 



He gives all law for worlds as well as man, 
Revealed in every pulse of Nature's life. 
Conform your minds accordant to His 
plan; 
Look up, behold, and leave your sordid 
strife ! 
Consider all these wondrous works on 

high, 
And teach your souls to worship with the 
sky. 



135 



The creant laws that made the heavens 
swarm 
With coimtless, deathless majesties of 
light, 
Hold universal fates that ever form 

All being's course in functions infinite: 
To feel this harmony of Primal Plan 
Alone is great, amid the shame of man. 



13a 



SUFFERING.— Sonnet. 

For whom the Lord doth love He chasten- 
eth, 
And scourgeth every one He doth 
receive. 
So e'en the depths of grief or pangs of 
death 
An exultation and a triumph give, 
Higher and greater than despised pain 
And scorned suffering of a little day. 
Therefore, ye fates, with all your tortures 
vain, 
Torment my life, but give my soul her 
sway: 
With loss and toil and care my heart 
oppress, 
And crush me down in dark humility, 
With scourging woes and chastening 
wretchedness. 
Yet shall my soul arise in majesty, 
Glowing with glory of this charmed 
distress. 
To reachless heights of Heaven's 
ecstasy. 

137 



WANDERING. 

'Twas eventide, and twilight gloomings 

Pale as phantoms of delight, 
Crept still o'er mellow day's illumings 

Vermeil-hued and bright, 
Whose floods with shades of evening bleod 

To gold from noontide's splendor white. 
The drooping leaves sweet blushing bend, 
Toward where day's glories soft descend. 

To kiss the sun good-night. 



And where the purling streamlet glinted 

Softer in its murmuring gush, 
And whisp 'ring ripples golden tinted 

Grlowed with day's wan blush, — 
We lingered by the verdant wold 

Sad-drooping twilight blooms o'erflush, 
Where zephyr's fallen pinions fold 
And solitude day's death condoled 

In solemn, omened hush. 



138 



My soul so weary with its striving 

Sank in rest beside the stream, 
Where Vesper, from her trance reviving 

Threw her silver gleam 
Fast bright 'ning in day's crimson wane ; 

And when the thrush forgot his theme 
And fluttered to yon leafy fane, 
My fair love breathed a magic strain 

Beguiling me to dream. 



'Twas sweeter than a siren's chanting. 

Wafting doomed souls to bliss ; 
More tender than the zephyr panting 

Fevered brows to kiss ; 
Oh, gladder than the songs of Spring 

That thrill the world with joyousness. 
And dear as strains the angels sing, — 
A song of love, enrapturing 

With passion's holiness. 



139 



My thrilled soul was soothed to dreaming 

Dreams too deep for human sight, 
'Mid raptured forms from Heaven seem- 

Borne on pinions light 
Of mortal love that breathed in song 

Supernal with its passion's might. 
My soul seemed with some angel-throng 
The radiant, fleeting stars among 

To take its flight. 



But when the night, her black robes shed- 
ding 

O 'er the meadow, stream and hill, 
Conjured her spell, a strange pow'r 
spreading 

O'er my slumbers still, 
A phantom weird of sorrow passed 

Among my dreams with love athrill 
That, paled with terror, vanished fast; 
And I awoke alone, aghast. 

Forlorn in night's black chill. 



140 



Alone! No visioned love forms thrilling 

Quivered o'er my straining sight: 
Alone ! No whispered love-tones stilling 

Care in joy's delight I 
No light from Heaven's dark domain 

Shone o'er my anguished soul, a blight, 
Heavy and thick with crushing pain. 
Consumed my love-lorn heart aswoon 

In sorrow's voiceless night. 



Oh, where had fled those dreams supernal, 

Vanished in love's eventide, — 
That transient passion vowed eternal 

I had deified'? 
Ah, could it stray and leave my heart 

To roam life's desert wild and wide, — 
To wander aimless and apart, 
A guideless love some Fury's dart 

Has ruthless struck aside? 



141 



Ah, for that joy I lost at even, 

Where the surging shadows rise 
I sought thro ' wreathed earth and Heaven, 

Death and Paradise. 
Thro' weird and starless realms above 

Where lifeless airs dull-mocked my 
sighs, 
And where the struggling night-shrouds 

strove 
All wild and wan I sought my love 

Among the blackened skies ; 



On where the frighted cloud-ships floated, 

Drooping wan their furling sails 
Once white, but where the death-pall 
gloated. 

Stained with midnight's bales. 
One fleeting instant shone a glow, — 

A flush of passing joy that pales; 
One soothing love-tone sweet and low 
Breathed tranced o'er my startled woe 

That plunged to earth's deep vales. 



142 



And when I roused to living sorrow, 

Thro' the forest dense and wild 
I wandered striving toward the morrow 

Where my lost joy smiled. 
On thro' the tangled wildwood- waste 

O'er cliffs and chasmy vales beguiled 
In wild desire and frenzied haste, 
As by some demon-anguish chased 

With nameless fury thrilled, 



I struggled on. Thro' bleak and trackless 

Regions of eternal care, 
Where veiled the midnight's phantomed 
blackness 

Haunts of mad despair. 
Concealing in her sightless glooms 

The sprites of Hell that frenzied bear 
The woe-worn souls to searchless dooms. 
Where thoughts' and dreams' and mem'- 
ries' tombs 

Yawned black, but passing fair ; 



143 



And where adown that gorge abysmal, 

Waste with wrecks of joy I crave, 
'Mid ragged gulfs and whirlpools dismal 

Faith and terror rave, — 
My tortured soul with yearnings torn. 

In fevered haste to find the grave 
Of vanished love, still struggled lorn; 
I sank, in fainting anguish borne. 

In madness' seething wave. 



Long thro' the soundless midnight's 
surges 

Phantom-throngs of ghastly care 
Fast-trooping gasped their hollow dirges 

O'er my dumb despair. 
Long thro' the lifeless soul's weird trance 

I felt the blackened ages fare 
Dead o'er life's ruined, dark expanse 
Once bright and fair, where beasts of 
Chance 

Their orgies vast prepare. 



144 



But calm as flushes glowing Vesper 

O'er the even's flood of gray, 
There throbbed thro' night a thrilled 
whisper 

Soft as blush of day ; 
And o'er my soul a presence dear, 

Entrancing like a seraph's lay 
Prom realms of bliss that hovered near, 
And sweeter than some vision fair 

From Heaven's dreams astray, 



O'erflushed at life's sublime awaking. 

Soft a thrilling hand clasped mine ; 
And night's abysmal glooms forsaking. 

Where veiled splendors shine — 
The irised blush of some new morn — 

Led ever by that hand divine, 
Par from that dread abyss upborne 
On wings that lowly earth-glooms scorn 

I sought yon glory's shrine. 



145 



And there I roused from life's weird 
dreamings 

On those heights at Heaven's bourn; 
And gazed o'er all earth's hollow seemings 

Dark and love-forlorn. 
I saw my petty passion wane 

And plunge in gloom its fire outworn ; 
And love all seared with burning pain 
Consumed its own desire with bane 

Of bitterness and scorn. 



My empty soul with hunger yearning. 

Turned to life as broad and great 
As mighty sweeps of God's discerning 

O'er all human fate. 
And all the joys and woes of men 

Poured o'er my heart to consecrate 
My selfish passion's paltry pain 
To UNIVEESAL LOVE again 

For every living state. 



146 



THE POET'S DEATH. 

The trooping, dreamless hours of night 
Their sombre robes in silence fold, 
Where feeble dawning 's pallid light 
The sleeping mist creeps timid o'er. 
The mazy shrouds flush dull and cold 
To pall the sun's delightless might, 
That vain his golden floods doth pour 
O'er surgeless vapors chill and hoar. 



All lonely sing, thou tender voice 
Astray from some diviner world; 
The throng hear not — their sordid choice 
The jangling song of selfish toil: 
Nor will they on those wings, unfurled. 
Of light and love, with thee rejoice 
To cleave of earth the shrouding veil 
And float in dreams where sorrows fail. 



147 



In realms where thy soul-harp, fine-strung 
And fragile 'mid earth's ragings dire, 
Would pant the magic strains that hung 
Like breathing angels' raptured dreams. 
But senses cloyed with low desire 
Can hear thee not ; and thou hast sung 
Forlorn in thy lone sky that teems 
With Heaven's fairest forms and gleams. 



The murky grime of senseless strife 
Whose mortal pall enshrouds the soul 
In loathful gyves, about thy life 
Its surgings hurl ; and thou must flee 
Par from the frenzied tumult's roll. 
That grides its torment o'er thy grief, - 
Deep in the wilds with rock and tree, 
With stream and flow'r whose melody 



148 



O 'erfloods and soars in wild delight 
On noonday's golden-gloried wings, 
That bear the yearning spirit's flight 
Thro' cloud-land's gloam to spirit-skies, 
Where voieeful Nature dreams and sings 
Her raptures charmed to rainbowed light ; 
And with her thrilling hymns shall rise 
Thine own, imbreathed with paradise. 



Here rest and dream; here sing and soar 
Where shadowed solitudes intone 
The tuneful airs with heav'nly lore 
That pulse in music o'er thy pain. 
No mortal ears shall list thy moan. 
Where glinting streams their murmurs 

pour 
All hush ; — where songs and odors wane. 
And faint upon thy sobf ul strain. 



149 



Thy feeble song throbs faint and low 
While zephyrs waft thy music's flight 
To flowers kissed with love's soft glow, 
To rustling leaves that float and sway 
A-dream on floods of stilled delight. 
No scorn of man, no blighting woe, 
No love-pangs stifle thy breathed lay. 
That, hushing, floods the waning day. 



Sleep in the golden eventide 

Where whisp 'rings lull the fretting leaves 

And surgef ul murmurs softly chide 

The glooms that throng the silv'ry stream. 

The phantom-moon, cloud-havened, 

weaves 
Her veil of mist-gems glancing wide ; 
And where the swooning odors teem 
The flow'rs all pallid listless dream. 



150 



Thy flushed brow grows pale and chill 
In airs that pant their last warm kiss : 
Thy spirit's plastic pulses thrill 
With joys divine that waft thy flight 
'Mid angel-forms of love and bliss 
That in thy earth-dreams hovered still. 
On yon bright, reachless glory-height 
Thy havened soul its throne of light, 



Envisioned in thy yearning dream. 
Doth mount ; while mystic thrills of bliss, 
From viewless choirs, thy soul o'erstream. 
Thy sky-lost songs of joy and pain. 
Thy yearnings strange for perfectness, 
Thy sighs and tears, thy Love supreme. 
Re-echo here in Heaven's fane 
And hymn Love's universal reign. 



151 



THE STORM.— Sonnet. 

The heavens darken with the palling gloom 
Wild, black and pathless save where 

arrowed gleams 
Of lightning cleave of day the death- 
blight's streams 
That from some hidden fount obscure as doom 
O'erpour in inky shrouds the sun's veiled 
tomb: 
The sallows whiffle in the gusts where 

teem 
The wreathing vapors' whirling soughs 
that seem 
To bode the Fates that joy and hope consume. 
With howl and roar the shocking thun- 
der-blast 
Grides thro' the gloom with horror- 
gapings riv'n: 
The lightning's flash 'mid furies hurled 
aghast 
Wild raging rives the grov'ling earth 
andheav'n: 
In shattered streams the rain-floods cold 
and fast 
Deluge the earth, in crashing frenzy 
driv'n. 

152 



AUTUMN LANDSCAPE.— Sonnet. 

The rolling hills creep slowly toward the 

sky, 

Swelling with verdant mead and fallow 
brown; 
And fringing forests all the landscape nigh 
With wondrous stains of hued apparel 
crown. 
Amid the sunlit foliage in the vale 

The hamlet gathers by the winding way, 
So still and moveless in the quiet dale, 
So clean and white in autumn's rich ar- 
ray. 
The soft and misty air clings like a pall 
Of lovely myst'ry o'er earth's waning 
life. 
And sad, sweet Glamour with her gracious 
thrall, 
In beauty hides all trace of human 

strife. 
Oh, that the world as pure and peaceful 

were, 
And life, a mystic dream as still and 
fair! 

153 



THE POET'S HOPE.— Sonnet. 

Great wealth of waters, mystery of doom, 
What f ountf ul sources brim thy heaving 

breast 
We know not, — strange as poet-soul 
aghast 
Imbreathing passive whisp 'rings from 

life's gloom. 
Emits, like odor from a dew-pearled bloom 
A symphony sky-imaging and vast 
As thy broad bosom wild and overcast 
With morn's mere splendors life's 
gloamed scenes illume. 
So mirrored in the pure souPs omened 
stream 
No griefful darkness but the dawn- 
ing 's light, 
Rainbowed and shadowless as lover's 
dream. 
Forebodes the perfect day ungloomed in 
night, 
Whose glories thro' grief -shrouded ages 
gleam 
And fill my soul with hope in man's de- 
light. 

154 



BIRDS AT EVENING. 

The scattered clouds are mellow stains 
On gray-blue skies with sunset paling ; 

The winds are hushed as daylight wanes, 
Like gloried passion failing. 



The mists are cooling o'er the stream 
Where shadows melt to somber glooming 

Man's toil is stilled 'neath one last gleam 
Of dying sun's illuming. 



How sad and lonely is the eve, 

How strange the mystic twilight creep- 
ing! 
The earth's sweet spirits brood and grieve 

For sunshine's death, — all weeping. 

Among the leaves' dew-scented shades 
Where zephyrs droop in secret slumber, 

The birds hunt through the dark'ning 
glades 
For love-bow 'rs hidden under. 

155 



How happy, with what shrill delight, 
Like joyous children wildly playing, 

Tumultuous in the gath'ring night 
They flit through branches swaying I 



How eagerly they call their mates 
To dark retreats secure from danger, 

Where happy, thoughtless rest awaits- 
And peace — to me a stranger ! 



The night to thee brings sweet content. 
No past regret, no promised sorrow; 

To me a dark and vain lament 
And trouble for the morrow. 



Could man like thee as sinless live. 
As free from want and care and pas- 
sion. 
Earth's day and night such bliss could 
give 
As God himself might fashion. 



156 



HOPE.— Sonnet. 

The halting morn in sombre mists inveiled 
Scarce stirs with torpid pallor thro' the 
gloom; 
And when the night's slow-creeping 

shroud had paled 
When Luna's bodeful glow with dawning 
failed, 
The humid pall dark with day's sullen 

doom 
Its chilly blight spread ruthless o'er 
night's tomb. 
My hopeful heart morn's triumph dark 
bewailed 
That sorrow's sluggish shades so dull 

illume. 
While rain-drops chant their dirge of 
settled grief 
And sighing winds creep thro' the 
shiv'ring leaves, 
An unknown songster with her carol brief 
Their monody of sadness glad relieves ; 
And with her omened lay a sweet belief, 
Like bursting light, my list'ning heart 
conceives. 

157 



ODE ON SYMPATHY. 

Ah, husli thy dreamful moans, sad heart. 
For thro ' the dernf ul glooming thrill 
Yet sweeter griefs whose flushes part 
The dark pain-shrouds with gloried marge. 
As Orphean harmonies did fill 
Stern Pluto's sphere with love-thrills dear 
So o'er my woe fast tremors start 
Prom mystic source, with ebb and surge. 



Thou Power ! What passion breathed in 

vows, 
Aflame that fierce consumes the soul, 
What greed, what hate, what crushing 

woes, 
What mad despair can reach thy bourn, 
Thy mystic world far as the goal 
Of spirit-flight ? What forms of light 
Surge round thy path ! What beauty glows 
Divine as irised hues of morn ! 



158 



Thou art the music of the spheres 
That thrills and floods like summer's glow. 
He who, in faint awe hushf ul, hears, 
Soars, spirit-wild, upon thy flight 
That bears him, tranced, far from woe. 
Delights and fears, to Heav'nly spheres 
Where, glory-throned, the Great Love rears 
A world enshrined in fadeless light. 

Like one who starts from wildered dreams 
Of love and home, whose quiv'ring sight 
'er prison-bars and darkness streams. 
So wakes the soul on earth forlorn 
Thy wings once bore 'mid Heaven's light: 
How cold the mirth of mocking earth. 
How false man's pompous progress seems 
Whose chilly blight o'ershrouds love's morn! 

Yet does thy spirit-music thrall ; 
His soul thy lovely visions fill ; 
And thro' life's mortal, cruel pall 
A mighty faith and hope, sweet balm. 
For trammeled man doth burst and thrill. 
That love thy song doth hymn as strong 
As light, and wide as worlds, doth lull 
Despair and Grief to mighty calm. 

159 



He feels the light athrob with love, 
He lists the) strains of spirit-choirs 
That o'er his pulsed heart-chords move 
Above the rage of want and woe. 
At peace in pain or passion's fires, 
He loves all life, thro' whose mean strife 
Attaining loftier heights above, 
Exalts the state of man below. 



That all might list that harmony 
Envisioned in celestial Love, 
Those joys of Beauty fadeless see, 
Those love-thrills soul-transforming 

know! 
Sweet spirit-grace our lives would move, 
And song and glow of peace o'erflow 
Our crime-gloomed state, with ecstasy, 
Till Heaven dwells on earth below. 



160 



LOVE AND LONELINESS. 
ToD. 

How few the souls that feel thy thrall, 

That in thy deep distress, 
Engulfs my wearied mind and all 
My being 'neath the darkened pall 

Of love and loneliness I 



Enshrouded in thy haunted spell, 

By all doomed save desire, — 
A dying slave beside a rill, 
I sink to feel the torturing thrill 
Thy passion-drops inspire : 



Yet live : nor feel the mad delight 

To quaff its crystal stream. 
My soul seeks thro' the world of night 
A heav'nly vision, lovely, bright, — 
Spirit of thought and dream. 



161 



I wander widly in the maze 

Whose depths so few have known, 
By Wisdom, then by Folly's craze 
Impelled, deluded in the haze 

Life's doubt has o'er me thrown. 



The soul's light passes like a dream, — 

Of vapors hov'ring light, 
Dissolved in some pain-charmed gleam. 
That vanishing, doth scarcely seem 

To cool its mortal blight. 



That soul-stream's depth of sympathy 

For life can men perceive ? 
Or know the great infinity 
Of Love, — the sweet divinity 

That gives but pow'r to grieve ? 



For ravishing in soul-delight 

Is sorrow's beauteous charm — 
That fines the heart with purging blight. 
And lifts it pure to Heaven's sight. 
Above the world's alarm. 

162 



As scent of rare and crnslied flow'rs 

In dying doth suffuse 
The fleeting air, and Nature's bow'rs 
Are gladdened in the odorous show'rs, — 

So sorrows deep diffuse 

Their tones of gracious harmony 

O'er all our heedless life, 
And thrill the chords of sympathy, 
Of love and beauteous charity 

For suffering and strife. 

Thou light 'mid shrouding gloom and 
dark, 

Thou sorrow-stricken flame. 
Beam out, for God nurtures thy spark : 
Tho' from the blinded world no mark 

Thou gain of pow'r or fame : 

Tho' listless still or raging loud 

The vulgar throng may jeer, 
A raptured few divine endowed 
Stand mute, entranced, their souls low- 
bowed 

Thy rhapsody to hear. 

163 



Tho' buried in the shrouding veil 

Of crushing destiny, 
Thy soul shall rise. Tho' glory fail 
From earth, and lusterless and pale 

Thy dreamed felicity, 



The arrowed pain, the startling tear. 

The joy in man's delight. 
The anguish-strife of love and fear. 
The throbbing pain in others' care 

Touched by some spirit-light. 



To angels' wings transformed divine. 

Shall fold thy fainting soul : 
While peaceful splendors o'er thee shine, 
In ecstasy thou shalt resign 

Thy strife, at Heaven's goal. 



Thou Spirit-pow 'r ! Too often tho ', 

Bound in thy torturing fire, 
I feel my passion's soul aglow. 
And all my being faint with woe, — 
The birth of high desire. 

164 



Ah, man is powerless. Love and joy, 

Sweet dreams of harmonies, 
Plow on unfelt. Life's sad alloy 
Pervades our all. Fail and destroy, 
And grieve are destinies. 



Infinity is Love. The soul. 

The limitless, is free ; 
The uncreated, whose control 
Is possibility, — the whole 
Of man's divinity. 



And in its yearnings toward some light 

Alone 'tis unconfined. 
All is reality's black night. 
And feebly soars that passion-flight,— 

A life in death enshrined. 



Yet shalt thou be, O, soul, so lone ? — 

Lo, love's forsaken shrine 
Yet gleams with radiance unknown, 
And human hearts shall yet enthrone 
That Spirit all divine. 

165 



Felicity would then be mine. 

That infinite, unknown 
Affection's pow'r should soft-entwine 
My pulsing life, and joy divine 

Of Passion be mine own. 



O, radiant Ideality, 

Inspire us with thy might, 
And all this sordid lethargy 
Of life will glow eternally 

Divine with splendors bright. 



Oh, spirit lovely, dwell with mine 

In constant, sweet devotion ! 
Ah, madly do I yearn and pine 
That thou, dear Vision, might 'st enshrine 

Thy soul in my emotion. 



166 



HARMONIES. 
I. 

I wandered lonely as a dream 

Afar 'mid forms of boundless night, 

Where every sight and sound did seem 
Descended from some height 

So vast and still that my own soul 

Could reach and grasp the mystic whole 
Of huge creation's might. 



In awe I heard the rolling world 

With myriad voices breathe subdued, 

Like soughing zephyrs softly furled 
In swoons of evening wood ; 

Like some great passion's whispered 
charms 

Of day still trembling in night's arms 
With spirit-rest imbued. 



167 



A distance deep of space and time 
Encompassed all with mystic might — 

A reign so gracious and sublime 
That every voice of night 

Was soothed and blent to one vast tone 

Like choiring hosts in unison 
All hushed in strange delight. 

The stormy world was still in sleep ; 

The blustering winds to peace were 
lulled; 
The stars seemed hung in hueless deep 

In silent ardor held. 
Oh, strange and vast that force sublime 
That clasped all earth and space and time, 

To strifeless poise compelled! 

The sweet accord of law divine 

With breathless wonder thrilled my 
heart — 
That rare, harmonious design 

Night's deepest glooms impart. 
I heard earth's solemn mystery 
Eevealed in murmured symphony, 

With weird and wondrous art. 

168 



II. 

I wandered through the boundless day, 
When wide the gilded heavens shone 

Aglow with grace of gushing May 
When winter's grasp was gone. 

All life was stirring with the birth 

Of myriad forms in air and earth — 
Pair summer's teeming zone. 



There seemed to rise from every place 
A tone of swarming motion vast. 

The sprites of spring in copious grace 
With warmth and wealth o'ercast 

Profusion rich with reeking life, 

Increasing, swelling, blooming rife, 
O'er all the earth enmassed. 



The stress of animation surged 
And billowed o'er the seething land; 

The resurrection vigor urged 
The strain and struggle grand : 

Yet, marvelous to human sense. 

The bursting, throbbing toil intense 
Seemed blent by God's command 

169 



To one sweet goal of mighty life — 

Of vast and vital luxury ; 
For naught of violence and strife 

In spring's great mystery. 
Some wondrous wand or charm of day 
Its sorc'ry breathed o'er mellow May, 

With magic unity. 

The rich-hued blooms blent with the green, 

And through the scented, vibrant air 
The dew flung back day's glory-sheen — 

A trembling echo rare ; 
And purling streams their murmurs 

hushed 
Where thrilling strains of song-birds 
gushed 
In concord strange and fair. 

My soul was filled with law divine 

Eevealed by day's sweet minstrelsy. 
I saw through Nature's veiled design 
Its lovely mystery 
With spirit-stress all things imbue, 
According every tone and hue 
To perfect harmony. 

170 



III. 

I wandered through the sun-reahn's 
course, 
And saw the planet-orbs swing 'round, 
Age after age, by viewless force 
Kept in eternal bound. 
The flame-sheathed sun and all his 

swarm 
Swept through black space and mar- 
shalled form. 
With mirrored brilliance crowned. 



The reeking bulk of comet-mass 
Plunged o'er the plane of circling 
spheres, 
Beyond the sunless bounds to pass 
And surge a thousand years 
In ebon night ; and wheel again 
Through measured arc with seething 
train 
That frightened heaven blears. 



171 



I saw the rolling systems fare 

With mutual orb and satellite, 
Great starry hosts in fiery glare 
Eush on in furious flight. 
And some were black, — great deadened 

worlds 
Forever hurled in midnight's swirls, 
Once bulks of bursting light. 



Stupendous magnitudes of gas, 

In whirling spires of flaming fume, 
Their million miles of monstrous mass 
Rage through the seething gloom. 
In fire of vapored fury spun. 
The nebulous molds of star and sun 
Arise from creant doom. 



Oh, universe of majesties. 

Oh, myriad worlds in vast array, 
What might of mystic harmonies 
Impels your mutual sway? 
What infinite succession's plan, 
What symmetry and poise maintain 
The concord of your way? 

172 



IV. 

I wandered in the ways of man — 

The last, the highest work sublime, 
Supreme in vast creation's plan 
O 'er world and space and time, 
Endowed with soul and heart and 

thought 
Above all forms of matter, wrought 
In life's eternal prime. 

I heard the roar and raucous din 

Of surging throngs in struggle vain — 
The rush and rage, the hate and sin 
In strife for wealth and gain. 
And o'er the blinded human host 
The sprites of envy, greed and lust 
Spread forth their poisoned bane. 

There was no peace or sweet content 

In home or city, field or mart : 
In industry and government 

Strife ruled the hand and heart. 
In discord harsh, in wrangling low, 
With neighbor, rival, friend and foe. 
Each sought his sordid part. 

173 



Engorged with self the sodden sense 

Degraded God's eternal plan, 
And groveled in abasement dense 
The vaunted soul of man : 
Dull eyes that ne'er Grod's glory saw 
In poise of worlds, in deathless law 
Of concord's triumph-reign. 



Distorted, lost, forgotten all 

The wondrous night's superb display ! 
Defiled and stained with evil's pall 

The glory of the day ! 
Oh, spirit-harmonies divine, 
Attune our souls to thy design 

That doth all being sway ! 



174 



ASPIRATION.— Sonnet. 
Pale art thou, Spirit, like a distant star 
Silent and reachless in the void inane. 
In ceaseless luster shrined without a 
stain, 
Save when earth's transient vapors rayless 

mar 
Thy majesty. When gates of night unbar 
And flood the world in blackness ' dismal 

reign 
Then dost thou rive with arrowed 
gleams the bane 
And steep the world in light-floods from 
afar. 
Thus art thou, aspiration, steadfast, 
pure, 
Cheering sin-trammeled souls thro' 
maze of grief ; 
E'er brightest where the glooms of pain 
endure, 
And rainbow-haloed in the mists of strife 
'Mid baleful, blighting cares thou dost al- 
lure 
Our feet to yon far glory-throne of 
life. 

175 



BILLY. 
To C. 

Somehow the summer air seems cold, 

And noonday skies are dim, 
And nature's charms grow dull and old 
Whene'er I think of him. 
And though the world may call me 
silly— 
Oh, how I miss you, Billy ! 



The meadow where you ran and played 

With bounding life and joy, — 

It seems the grass and clover fade 

With some strange, dead alloy. 

The kindly sun grows sad and chilly, 
For, oh, I miss you, Billy. 



176 



The house is cheerless ; every room 

Is empty, lone and bare. 
It doesn't seem the same old home 
With you no longer there. 
But when night comes so dark and 
stilly, 
Oh, then I miss you, Billy. 



My boat, deserted, seems to wait. 

Your friends, the birds, are still. 
The little isle is desolute 
Your joyous barks did fill. 

My life is lone and fares but illy, — 
So much I miss you, Billy. 



No more you sorrow when I go. 

Or wait my sad return. 
The gleesome hills are still with woe, 
And fields in silence yearn. 

The crying jays all mourn you shrilly, 
And oh, I miss you Billy. 



J77 



Only a dog ! Oh, could I keep 

The love of such a friend I 
Forever tender, pure and deep, 
So faithful to the end I 
Your soul was white as any lily, 
And oh, I miss you, Billy. 



And you loved her, and she loved you. 

We all loved one another ; 
And no companions were more true, — 
So we two weep together. 
And now life's road seems rough and 
hilly- 
For, oh, we miss you, Billy. 



178 



MORNING.— Sonnet. 

The fair Aurora with her dazzling train 
Sweeps radiant o 'er the bourn of despot 

Night 
Who feels the tremor of her conq'ring 
flight: 
And when the stars, his sentries, pale and 

wane, 
He flees in sullen wrath his wide domain. 
The world, subdued and voiceless 'neath 
his might. 
Arises, thrilled with dawn and robed in 

light. 
To hymn the radiant Morning's joyful 
reign. 
The dew-gems flam e with splendor ; and 
the stream 
That hushed beneath her shroud of 
sombre gray, 
Across her surging breast with tint and 
gleam 
Spreads fast her path-floods silvered 
o'er with day; 

179 



And songsters' thrilling strains and for- 
est-hynm 
Pant with my heart the bliss of wan- 
ing May. 



180 



NOON. — Sonnet. 

To dazzling glory-floods the bursting sun 
Melts all his gleaming gold ; the radiant 

sky, 
Transfused with hueless splendor, now 
on high 
Glows white where morn's far azure depth 

had shone. 
Save where, 'mid fringed marge of yon 
high cone, 
In captive bow'rs the deep'ning blue 

doth lie. 
The rhapsodies of some thrilled song- 
ster nigh 
With mazy bliss noon's vibrant lights in- 
tone: 
And while the floods of brilliance burst 
and flow, 
Eeflected on the dancing, rippled 
stream 
In glintings swift like flashing stars 
aglow, — 
The tonef ul airs that flush and thrill, 
ateem 

181 



With gladness, life and light Thou dost 
bestow, 
With Nature's voice Thy deathless 
glories hymn. 



182 



EVENING.— Sonnet. 

The shadows fall. Above yon mist- 
dimmed hill 
The lurid sun flames o'er a vermeil sea 
Where day, aswoon, to gloried 
pageantry 
Melts all her radiant hues. The flushful 
thrill 
Floods, tingeing like despair the hills 
and sky, 
As calm as mighty griefs some great soul fill. 
An ebbing zephyr languid breathes its sigh, 
And plaintfiil songsters pant their carols 
stiU. 
Across the surgeless stream's o'ershad- 

owed breast 
The mirrored trees recline in moveless 

rest ; 
And like the voicef ul silence of a dream. 
The solitudes intone their twilight hymn 
That, like my heart, pales with the 
glooming west. 
When Vesper greets the night with 
one white gleam. 

183 



NIGHT.— Sonnet. 

From what hid depths of blackness, lethal 
Night, 
Abysmal as the source of ruthless doom, 
Hast thou in ebon streams poured o'er 
earth-gloom 
Thy leaden pall amassed, yon star despite 
That, sullied in the inky, mistf ul blight. 
To bodeful, haloed glows thy veils illume ? 
Thy sluggish shrouds, thick, sensate as 
the tomb. 
In swelling floods veil earth in sombre might. 
Some pallid cloud-heaps surge their 
broken wreathes 
About the ghastly moon that hangs in 
wane 
Of omened gold the lurking mist en- 
sheathes ; 
And from the world asleep one mur- 
murous strain 
Pants where the ebbing zephyr fitful 
breathes 
To waft to Thee my solemn love's re- 
frain. 

184 



ODE ON THE TRANQUILITY OP 
THE SOUL. 

From what mysterious realms of spirit- 
might 

Thou art, 'mid whose unfathomed gloom, 
O soul, 

Thou with the One Eternal sourceless 
dwelt. 

Our fettered minds conceive not. To what 
goal 

Thy guideless course in swift, earth-tram- 
meled flight 

Doth strive, beyond life's wildered world 
exalt. 

We know not. Yet must thou deathless 
and free 

Flow back to thine exhaustless Fount of 
Light, 

Purged from the dross of vain mortality. 



Thou firmless Essence of Divinity, 
Thou fleeting portion of the Primal Soul, 
What mocking, powerless ills of subject- 
time 

185 



Or mortal being's imaged spectres dull 
Can reach thy spirit-realm's far sanctity. 
'Mid earth-born forms thou from thy 

throne sublime, 
Exalt above our world of paltry life, 
Its passion, chance, its joy and misery, 
Dost dwell a moment 'mid our frenzied 
strife. 



And thou alone art life : our mortal state, — 
A vanished moment, or a broken dream, 
A body reared of finely-tempered clay. 
Empyreal dust inwrought with Heaven's 

gleam, — 
Is but thy fane, thy dwelling consecrate ; 
And from the world of evil and decay 
Where Mammon goads to hate and lust 

and fear, 
With misery and crime his slaves to sate, 
No mightless ill shall reach thy hallowed 

sphere. 



Save thro' our guidless will's supreme de- 
sire: 

186 



For fear, disaster, calumny and pain. 
Despair and loss, that, — monsters haggish, 

— seem 
Their orgies foul with ruin's feasts to 

stain, 
Are naught but seemings pale or spectres 

dire 
That ghastly flitting thro' life's fitful 

dream 
Affright of craven man the dreadful sight. 
For know ye not that all events transpire 
By His own will who gave thy soul the 

might 



Exalt above appearance, visions vain 
O'er whose strange course our wills have 

no control; 
And that from evil thou canst feel no 

harm, 
Whose fate secure rests with the Primal 

Soul? 
So shalt thou e'er content thee to remain 
Where He has deemed thee fit, without 

alarm. 

187 



Thus ever harmless 'mid life's trooping 

ills 
Thy soul shall rest in peace, nor feel the 

bane 
Of agony that hearts more mortal fills. 



Yet shouldst thou in that strife that death 
destroys — 

That tragic mask that hides 'neath hor- 
ror's face 

A form of wondrous beauty — lose thy 
faith, 

Thine honor, purity or truth debase, 

Then hast thou suffered, for sin's base al- 
loys 

The radiance of thy soul have tinged with 
death ; 

For thou hast bowed, at Evil's slavery- 
shrine. 

The God within thee, where desire decoys 

The soul to serfdom from its realm divine. 



Thou sourceless, deathless Night, this is 
thy sphere, — 

188 



That good or evil thou dost e'er create 

Thro' our own will, — aversion or desire: 

And from ourselves all that is good and 
great 

Or vile and paltry by our choice appear. 

Wouldst thou to greatness of the soul as- 
pire, 

Or wouldst thou feel a mighty noble- 
ness? — 

Then have it from thyself; — thy wish sin- 
cere 

Can nigh exalt thy life to perfectness. 



He who attunes his soul to harmony, 
Who with the hymning spheres can grand- 
ly say, 
**0 Universe, all that with thee accords 
Shall harmonize with my own soul alway, " 
Hath quaffed the nectar of Divinity: 
E'en tribulation or distress affords 
A peaceful gratitude, a calm supreme. 
Whose mighty soul doth tone its symphony 
To enthean strains the angels ceaseless 
hymn. 

189 



Wouldst thou be tranquil, weary, striving 

soul?— 
Then shalt thou with immortal faith but 

learn 
To wish that all may happen as it does ; 
And tho' for heights unseen thou e'er shalt 

yearn. 
Yet He who hath all things in His control 
In wisdom fathomless shall each dispose ; 
For tho' thy finite mind shall not foresee 
An atom of His plan's majestic whole. 
All is and moves for His world's harmony. 



Hast thou ne'er felt that with all earthly 
things 

A concord strange with Heav'nly states 
doth reign ? — 

A harmony divine whose mystic strains 

Thou oft hast heard in yon still forest- 
fane. 

Where, 'mid the birds' wild, gladsome car- 
ols, sings 

The voiceful solitudes; and strange re- 
frains 

190 



Of murmuring winds and rustling leaves 

intone 
The airs with Nature's omened echoings 
Of lights and sounds that thrill from 

Heaven's throne. 



And how, thro' mingled worlds of soul and 

space, 
Is this accord preserved, save by His hand 
Who orders all aright ? Behold the flow 'r 
That opes its folded leaves at His com- 
mand; 
And when He bids it bloom in sweetest 

grace 
Doth it not blossom tranquil 'neath His 

Pow'r? 
And when in peaceful rest of dewy night 
He bids it droop its leaves ; and when the 

face 
Of Nature blushes in the Autumn's blight, 



Doth it not yield its impulse pure to Him, 
And sleep when night and winter's chill 
encroach? — 

191 



And how, when Luna full doth glow, or 
wane, 

Or at the sun's recession or approach 

Do changes vast occur? — That God su- 
preme 

In harmony the universe shall reign. 

Then know, O heart that yearnest for re- 
pose, 

That Nature's sacred concord may redeem 

To tranquil rest thy human world of woes. 



Her deep revealings seek. Learn to ac- 
cord 
To her appointed states thy life and soul ; 
For this is truth : her G-od to contemplate, 
She manifests in sovereign control. 
Who lives in error is a slave abhorred 
Whose soul he subjects to externals' 

fate, — 
To strife and greed, to passion and de- 
spair ; 
Who faith and love in vanity ignored 
And feeds his life with vulgar, earthy fare. 



Id2 



But who are kings of earth, whose spirits 

see, 
Beyond the veil of being, reahns divine, 
And thro' the raging storm of paltry life 
Their souls in tranquil blessedness en- 
shine ? — 
They who, attuned to Nature's harmony. 
Their souls, amid man's loveless, frenzied 

strife, 
Enwreathe in peace thro' mighty love and 

faith ; 
Who, 'mid false spectres of reality 
And semblances of mocking fate and death 



Keep undeceived and unbetrayed by strife 
Their souls inviolate, unstained by woes, 
Untrameled in earth's mocking vanities, 
But havened in sweet, halcyon repose ; 
Who while they live to love all hmnan life, 
Expect their Master's signal, to arise 
Transformed to firmless soul in spheres 

above, 
In joy to do the bidding of their Chief, 
Or tranquil rest with the one Primal Love. 

193 



THE SUPREME GOOD.— Sonnet. 
O 'er all the earth I blindly sought for love 
And found it not through years of var- 
ied strife. 
Through luxury's realms and common 
ways I strove, 
Where men, lost in the vanities of life. 
Seek happiness in vast possession's hoard, 
And joy in gross excess of goods and 
gold; 
And some seek fame as their immortal 
lord, 
And some exult in pleasures manifold. 
But one I saw whose sad and radiant face 
Was like a soul transformed to human 
grace; 
Nor joy, nor wealth he knew — ^his one 
desire 
To cure life's ills and ease its common 
woe; 
And he alone seemed great and good and 

fair. 
Oh, was it Christ or man? — I do not 
know. 

194 



THE PRAYER OP THE 
PANTHEIST.— Sonnet. 

Ye spirit-glories of the air and sky, 
Ye pow'rs of earth, ye angels of the 

deep, 
Whom God created Nature's watch to 
keep 
In all His worlds of sovereign majesty: — 
Oh, guard and guide me from your thrones 
on high. 
Through secret thoughts and mystic 

charms of sleep : 
When ruin raves and evils crushing 
sweep. 
To favor, bless and aid, be ever nigh. 
And ye, fond loves and tender beauties 
pure, 
Thrilling all life with vital mystery. 
Inspire my being with celestial lore, 

Attune my heart to heav'nly harmony; 
Oh, loveliness divine, my soul allure 
To triumph-skies and realms of ecstasy. 



195 



REVOLUTION.— Sonnet. 
Over the raging world a spirit passed — 
A wraith of weird despair and conflict 
vast, 
And men arose, as slaves chained to the 

soil, 
From hunger's pangs, from grief and 
fruitless toil ; 
And fired to war with madd'ning woes 
aghast. 
Spread o'er the earth to conquer or de- 
spoil ; 
And all the wealth and pow'r through 
ages massed 
Were crushed to dust in hideous tur- 
moil. 
From depths of utter ruin slowly rose 
A people strange burned white by fining 
fire. 
And from the night of desolation's woes 
They reared a structure high as God's 
desire ; 
And in that beauteous realm where sor- 
rows cease 
They dwelt as one vast soul in love and 
peace. 

196 



THE LIGHT OP NEW YEAR. 

Like stars that pale in dawning 's gleam, 
Like mists dissolving in the light, 

Like music waning in a dream, — 

The Old Year faints and fails and dies 

Consumed and lost in Time's fell flight. 
Engulfed in glooms of oblivion vast, 
Simk in soundless depths there lies 
One year of life forever past 



Laden with weight of woes it went 
For millions plunged in want and care ; 

And light with ease and soft content 
For thousands lulled in Fortune's arms. 

Oh, vanished year, and did you bear 
One grace for me to God above. 
Who turned from all thy selfish charms, 
To dare the dream of Hmnan Love ? 



197 



And now, oh vast and viewless realm 

Of future time, I turn to thee. 
And lofty hopes my doubts o'erwhelm. 

Like mighty dawn that floods the night. 
Before me sweeps a surging sea 
Of gloried gold and rose, where day 
Pours radiant streams of throbbing 
light 

That spread o'er heaven's boundless 
way. 



'Tis New Year's Morn. The glory-glow, 
That sets the night-gloomed world 
aflame, 
Must fire the souls of men below 

And thrill them with the Light of God. 
No more the sin-cursed darks of shame 

Shall stain the radiance of the soul 
That rises from the sordid sod 
And yearns afar to Heaven's goal. 



198 



So let thy gleams, returning year, 

Consume the dross and purge the grime 
Of greed and self, of hate and fear 

That chain the soul to groveling strife. 
Our hearts burned white with fire su- 
blime 
Of holier griefs, shall purer be 
For world-wide symi3athy of life — 
The soul of Christ's Divinity. 



Oh, glorious seraph- wings of splendor. 

Bear to earth great floods of love 
As broad and deep, as sweet and tender 
As the light of this New Morn. 
Ah, then our human griefs would prove 

The source of soul-compassion free. 
The crown of happiness pain-born, 
The tear-lit fount of ecstasy. 



199 



THE POWERS THAT BE. 

Ye vanities of human pow 'r , 
Ye earthly mights exalt o'er man, 
In fortune, birth, in wealth or reign, 
Do ye forget God's wondrous plan 
Bestowed on thee thy paltry dow'r— 
A trust thou one day shalt return. 
Rewarded, or condemned ? How vain 
Your blind desires and self -greeds burn ! 



How shameful gloats that bigot-sight. 
Torpid and bleared with fleshy rheum, — 
That leers upon the world of life 
Infected with thy self-love's doom — 
That griasps God's heritage of light 
A thing to barter, weigh and sell. 
To turn to gain, to greed and strife 
That cloy life's stream with crime-dregs 
feU! 



200 



And will ye have and hoard, nor know 
That all your sated cravings coarse, 
Your wanton revels, mirthful ease 
And glutton pleasures' wasteful farce 
Are sprites of death that pale your brow 
With mocking flush of last desire 
That joys divine alone appease 
When death has purged earth-dross with 
fire?— 

Ah, pause in this vain strife with Death. 
Thou canst not luxury-blear his eyes 
Nor glut with gold his venom-greed. 
Pow'r naught avails, but Love defies 
His dreaded might; and holy faith 
In human destiny of love 
Alone thy storm-lost soul can lead 
To fairer havens calm above. 

Alone ; for all thy might and gold 
Is not of pomp or sumptuous state, 
But merged in tears, and reared of sighs, — 
The orphan's moan, the soldier's fate, 
The widow's pang of want and cold. 
The dull fatigue of praiseless toil. 
The thousand minions you despise 
Who grovel for your ease, and moil 

201 



In ceaseless hardship, pain and want, — 
From them, thou blinded vain, thy lot 
Is herited, of wealth or pow'r. 
The sin-grimed glory thou hast sought 
But taints thy soul; thy pomp and vaunt, 
To whom much hath committed been, 
Cry out against thee in that hour 
When God shall try the souls of men. 

Then seek not pow'r or wealth of earth 
Whose canker eats the deathless soul. 
There is a gem whose flood-gleams dear 
O'er earth their tranced glories roll. 
Prom some pure soul 'mid human dearth 
It thriUs the earth : — holy Love, 
That glows the flushing heavens o'er. 
And wooes to earth God's reign above! 

Ah, canst thou climb yon glory-height 
Transcendent in the day enshrined? 
Ah, canst thou leave the strife and grime. 
And cast from thee what fetters bind, — 
What rankling wealth, what mean delight, 
What hate and fear, what base desire ? 
Then, in the glow of love sublime 
With vital faith for man, aspire 

202 



Not yet to cleave the upper airs 

Of exultation, — but, adown 

That wild abyss of blackened night, 

Where fell Destruction's demons crown 

Humiliation with despairs, 

Where torture drives thee on, descend. 

And let thy rescued soul in might 

Of some diviner anguish blend. 



Now shalt thou rise ! Thy life elate 
From fining depths of crushing woe 
So purged from earth's vile dross and 

blight 
Aspires to sky-lit heights where flow 
From soul-realms of the pure and great 
Love's glory-floods, o'er man's abode, 
That thrills the world with Heaven's 

might 
And yearnings infinite of God. 



203 



VISIONED LOVELINESS. 

Farewell, thou Spirit of the Light, 
Thou unseen gleam of Loveliness, 
I with mankind in grief must roam, 
Thou rule in bliss, tho' loveliness. 
Whence, havened in thy woeless home. 
Thy gleams may pierce earth's sorrowed 

night 
And lead some godlike soul to rise. 
And sing to man from thy pure skies. 



Yet, can we part? — tho' for the gloom 
I leave these brightest hills and vales 
Where blushless Wealth in thy fierce 

gleam, 
Like night before the dawning, pales ; 
And where the rayless ages seem 
To pall in grief man's self-made doom; 
Where Kings of craven Greed for thrones 
Man's scorn shall have,— no more his 

groans. 



204 



For thou art Doom, Great Soul of Love ; 
Thy spirit, glad in bodeful might, 
Speaks thro' the voiceful, perfect day, 
Sings in the dreamful, starry night. 
These hills, rocks, trees, — all fade away, 
Charred wastes the pathless stars shall 

roll; 
Yet, f ailless Spirit of the Spheres, 
Thy beauty, rainbowed in the years. 

Shall glow to light Man's cheerless way 
To perfect love. But, rapture rare 
Thy vision were to man's seared eyes. 
Like gleams of some lost, wildered star 
That chains him in thy mysteries. 
Who thy unimaged form survey, 
With love imbreathed, devote their life 
To wage with woe thy endless strife. 

Oh, could I with some godlike might 
The fettered souls of men unbind, 
That they might see thee throned afar 
In hueless majesty, enshrined 
In fire 'mid soulless darks, — a star 
To rive the chilling blacks of night, — 
Of woeful earth a rapturous state 
In Beauty's stainless light create! 

205 



But dastard Custom's carious grime, 
Opinion, f asMon, habit vile. 
Of ages form the rankling gyves 
Seared fleshly on men's souls, — ^beguile 
Their eyes with glamour, till their lives 
Pracid with self, rot in their prime. 
And godlike spirits formed for joy. 
With self -soul-streams of rapture cloy. 

Self -fouled, like senseful beasts we die, 
Except thou, with thy irised light, 
Wilt char these adamantine chains 
And merge man's soul, begloomed in night. 
In splendor. Then thy dreary fanes 
Throngs love-adoring glorify. 
And empyrean hymns shall rise 
To mingle with thy radiant skies. — 

Too wild, wild dream, thy rushing flow 
Has left my soul a serfless sea 
With joy becalmed and imageless, 
Save where thy gleam of majesty — 
A quenchless star, when beaconless 
The ocean of the soul, with woe — 
Tn constant glory bodes the doom 
Of souls divine, 'mid shrouding gloom; 

206 



Reveals the path where surge the throngs 
To certain, nearing joy, — to thee, 
Q-reat Spirit, that with waneless pow'r 
Directs the world to ecstasy. 
Unpall the sightless eyes ; the hour 
Of life, scorned, visioned souls in songs 
Invoke with voiceless moans inwove, 
Fulfill, thou Majesty of Love. 



207 



CHEISTMAS THOUGHTS. 

To K. W. 

Thou in whose life an angel-light, 
Sweet like the star of Bethlehem, 
Had hidden as some lovely gem. 
Until its rays shone on my soul, 
And, though enwreathed in blacks of night 
A glory-bliss the death-glooms stole, — 
Whose soul so like a flow 'r divine 
Love's tender beam doth soft enroll — 
Then, love's pure joy seem'd ever 
mine — 



Thou to whose soul mine own was bound 
Inseparable as the sea 
Prom its enclosing strands, to be 
My angel-light, my guiding star, 
My life, my pow'r whom I have crown 'd 
My Vestal Queen, so pure, so dear, — 
So holy that strange fears unknown, 
Like shadows my life's radiance mar — 
That you might leave me here alone 

208 



And glide on spirit-wings away — 
A flow'r, a gleam of light, a joy 
Too lovely mid earth's harsh alloy. 
Oh, though thou art so cold, so far, 
I feel thee near ; I hear thee say: 

*^ Peace, peace, sad heart. Doth not 

the star 
Of Hope, though darked in wreathing 
clouds. 
Somewhere beam thro' thy anguish 
drear 
And light thy Desolation's shrouds'?" 

Ah, yes ! Despair with human heart 
Dwell ne'er together linked in life: 
One reigns, for death must crown their 
strife, 
If Hope ascend not to her throne. 
The darks and mists of years may part 
The struggling heart from love's own 

home, 
But e'en pain's fire and sorrow's 
might, 
Consumed in every pray 'r and moan. 
Shall, burning fierce, give forth a 
light 

209 



Feebler and calmer as the star 
Before the Dawn's great birth of love. 
My, Own ! Oh wilt thou feel above 
The anguished heart— the throes of 
woe, 
God's love and peace, oft unseen, far, 
Still anguish-soothing, softly flow? — 

This Christmas-Tide, so desolate 
My low-bow 'd soul that griefs o'er- 
flow, — . 
How must I wait on God — Oh, wait I 



May He who comes in Birthmorn-cheer, 
In gloried light His Own to bless. 
Take thy sweet heart, thy loveliness. 
Thy angel-purity, thy face 
So holy, radiant, so dear — 

And tho' I feel not thy embrace. 
Thy kiss of love's deep, pure delight. 
Nor see thee, hold thee, — ^yet His Grace 
Supports me, guides me thro' the 
night. 



210 



All see ! Dawn breaks. His star is flown, 
But floods of glory's light burst thro' 
The cloud-rolls, lusters soft imbue. 
His day of Love gleams bright and 
calm 
He whispers : * ' Still ! thou woeful moan. 
Be soothed, thou anguish 'd wounds, 

with balm 
Of Hope, of Faith, of Trust com- 
plete." 
Oh I Darling, list I Dost hear the psalm 
The angel-choirs sing, at His feet*? 



O, Thou whose love had bid me live, 
Whose angel-life and angel-love 
So pure, so fervent, from Above, 
Fill'd life with Heav'n's felicity,— 
Oh, know — that He doth chast'ning give 
To His dear ones, with purity 
That souls less deep have never 
known. 
Oh, hear ! He takes thy love from me 
To give made Holy, O, My Own! 



211 



ODE ON HUMILIATION. 

Thou Pow'r unseen, thou nameless Might, 

Thy majesty doth silent rear 
An august reign of mystic night 

Where those unfathomed souls of 
men, — 
The good, the great, shall feel no fear 
Descending from some triumph height 
And buried in thy dread domain. 
There bitter loss and rankling pain 
Shall train their kingly hearts to hear 
Thy trancing words ' divine refrain : 

Thou far Sublimity unknown 

'Mid this low-thronging human dearth, 
Where eyes with gloating blinded grown 
With golden glitter vain, do leer 
Their coarse desires o'er all the earth, — 
Not they upon that tear-built throne 
Of titled scorn and wealth austere 
Whose praise they form from hu- 
man sighs, 
From pang and pain their cruel mirth 
Shall mount to thy far spirit-skies. 

212 



Thou reachless Depth, that soul alone 
That shone with mighty love's pure 
glow, 
As high as thrills the magic tone 

Of Heaven's harmonies, as wide 
As floods the noon's swift, golden 
flow: — 
The love that lists each human moan. 
As pure and sweet as swells the tide 
Of God's own soul o'er human 
grief,— 
Alone may reach thy depths below 

When he has trod the heights of life. 

That soul that thro ' the haunted years 
Of spectral joys and woes that move 
O'er ragged paths 'twixt bliss and fears, 
At last shall gain that lonely height. 
O'er all the tribes of men, his love. 
In one sweet flood of yearning tears, 

Can pour its boundless streams of 
might. 
Ay, who those spirit ways has trod 
Alone is great and mounts above 

The deathful world, and with his 
God, 

213 



Alone may leave this glory-sphere, 

And o'er sky- wastes of dreamless night, 
Thro' worlds of pain and darks of care— 
And days of heavenly despair, 
May reach thy realms. No ray of light 
Eeveals the soundless depths of fear 
Where dauntless hearts alone must 
dare 
To enter. But the jagged way, 
O 'er crag and cliff, thro ' cold and blight. 
Winds thro' grief's demon- world 
astray. 



Thou deep, black gulf of living death, 
Asurge with darks of ghostly night, 
Thy sorrows' silent-heaving breath 

Scarce stirs the pall-floods of despair 
That die, and die, — ^yet strive to blight 
In quenchless waves the calms of faith. 
Those flushings pale of dreams once 
fair, 
Those sparks of memory, divine 
That in the thraldom of thy might. 
Thou Dreadless King, shall shine 
and shine. 

214 



Thou ordeal of the reignless soul, 

Thou terror of the triumph curse, 
Thou art my guide to yon sky-goal, 

From whence in this dark, depthless 
vale 
Vast floods of woe the soul immerse, 
Descending where night-surges roll ; 

Down past the throng whose sightless 
wail 
Or mocking joy doth speak the 
doom 
Of self -sunk lives' inferior course 

That sluggish taints earth's com- 
mon gloom. 

Now to yon height, brave heart, above! 

For thou hast trod the reahn of pain ; 
And rising spotless thou shalt move 
A soul exalted thro' life's ills. 
Nor pause till thou that sky- throne gain 
Whose kingless majesty of love 

Enshrined in stainless glory, thrills, 
With beauteous light the earth for- 
lorn. 
And, with its splendor floods again 
The flush of Love's awaking morn. 

215 



To the 

SERAPH-SOUL. 

Thou mystic Beauty, phantomed Loveli- 
ness, 
Thou visioned grace of Seraph-Soul su- 
preme. 
Whose visitings are fleeting 
As pale joy's wooed greeting. 
Whose wildered flight is swifter than the 
gleam 
Of lightning's flash o'er midnight's face. 
Whose form i^ fairer than the grace 
Of passion's purest dream: 

Thou Unknown Spirit, from thy realm 
above. 
With breathings that transfuse our hu- 
man state. 
Still silently incline us 
To thy One Love's divineness 
As broad as flows the soul-streams of the 
Great, — 
As soft as yearns the poet's love. 
And fairer than his dreams that move 
Like angels round his fate. 

216 ' 



Thou holy Sympathy that broad and free 
Wilt shed thy balm with life's far-lin- 
g 'ring dawn, 
Like Heaven's flood-lights glowing, 
O'er midnight's glooming flowing, 
O 'er this low sphere of mingled song and 
moan, — 
Oh, list my love-hymns ' ecstasy 
That wooes thy mystic Majesty > 

To rear thy Triumph-Throne. 



217 



THE SEASONS' IMPRESSIONS. 

Thou rustling wind among the withered 
leaves, 
A sorrowed dirge thou singest of the 
year 
Slow waning to its death. Rude frost be- 
reaves 
The autumn gold of splendor, and the 
clouds 
Somber with mocking light, proclaim 
the drear 
Dead spell that life in cruel triiunph 
shrouds. 
And wakes the heart to worship — or to 
fear. 



Bleak, cheerless Winter! All the Sum- 
mer's song 
Is hushed as if forever. Gone the flow- 
ers, 

The warmth, the color and the teeming 
throng 

218 



Of life in earth and air — lost in thy 
gloom ; 
And mem'ry of the summer's lavish 
powers 
Is mingled with the bitter sense of 
doom — 
The killing snows where once the living 
showers. 



And yet, there is a marvel in thy might, 

A wonder in thy dazzling mystery, 
A worship in thy solemn glory white 

So pure that e'en the skies pale in its 
glow. 
Oh, I could love thee for thy majesty — 
The spotless splendor of thy robe of 
snow 
Thy mountain ice-crown's gleaming chas- 
tity, 



219 



Thine is the pow'r of infinite repose — 

The destiny of stern and moveless rest ; 
And yet, immortal hopes our souls com- 
pose 
With dreams of Summer and her 
flow'ry train. 
Day follows night; and through Law's 
edict blest, 
Thy icy throne shall melt to Spring 
again — 
Strange omen of life's triumph manifest. 



For him who lives in plenteous content, 
Whom fortune blesses with abundant 
store, 
Sweet solace are these visions eloquent — 
These paling dreams of God's recur- 
ring law. 
But how shall these vain thoughts or 
empty lore 
Of deathless life or Winter's magic 
awe 
Assuage the thousand cravings of the 
poor? 

220 ^ 



How shall the millions, whom chill Win- 
ter rude 
Condemns to want and hunger, cold and 
pain, 
Find warmth and plenty in the barren 
food 
Of beauty or religion ? — What to him 
The robes of snow, the mountains ice- 
bound chain, 
The crystal brilliance, but a monster 
grim — 
To peace a mock'ry and to joy a bane ? 

Oh, that the full import of Nature's 
mood — 
The reign of rigorous Winter, or the 
rare 
Voluptuous kiss of Summer's plentitude — 
Might be to thee, my brother, as to 
me! 
Our souls relieved of rankling want and 
care 
Would thrill like harps with life's di- 
vinity, 
Would rise like Christ above life's vast de- 
spair. 

221 



FOUND AT DAWN. 
To Mr. J. G. P. 

Far in the autumn's twilight thrall 
Where sombrous glooms their pinions 
furled 
O'er surging floods of languored 
night, 
The airless vapors wrap their pall 

About the pining day whose flight 
Stirs faint the dank gloam-floods that roll 
O'er trembling earth their chilly blight 
And still in pain the sullen world. 

Deep in the gloom of mountain-wilds 
The scragged rocks' grim giant-forms 
Thrust black their massy, cragged 
crowns 
Where ghastly Demon-Night beguiles 
The phantom-shades to pall their 
frowns 
In death. With murk the depthless vales 
Night's sluggish bale-flood sightless 
drowns. 
And silence breathes in surgeless 
storms. 

222 



Dark in these pathless wilds my soul 
All wildered in its maze of doom 

Groped thro' the hushed blackness 
lost 
'Mid formless thoughts that mocking roll 
Their demon-dreamings' frantic host. 
A gleam that thro' the rock-clefts stole 
Passed o'er my startled sense, — a 
ghost 
Devoured in Hope's unfathomed tomb. 



The feverous glooms that sombre wreathed 
Their flushes pale as love and joy, 
Like dreams of hope, their shades en- 
tomb 
Where deep despair in anguish breathed. 
The floods of blackness thick inhume 
The fainting gleams where night-palls 
seethed, — 
Like hope and faith that in life's doom 
The ebbing tides of fear destroy. 



223 



In wild dismay I wandered lost. 
But like the warmth of flushing dawn 
That breathes o'er pallid, night- 
chilled blooms, — 
Or star, to seaman tempest-tossed, 

That constant brightens thro' the 
glooms, 
A hushed strain subdued but vast 

As mighty love intoned thro' dooms, 
Throbbed o'er my moanless senses wan. 



And, gloating thro' the shrouds of night, 
My mid eyes, by that voice so dear 
Allured, the sullen gloam descried 
That ghastly shrouded yon dim height. 
Thro' ragged wilds of rocks black- 
dyed 
My senseless feet thro' doubtful light 
Toiled up where feeble glows flushed 
wide 
And paled the fainting night with fear. 



224 



A hand with sorrowed love aglow 

My strength sustained, and to that 
height 
Still led me on. That voice so dear 
That angels listened to its flow 

Breathed o'er my languid sense its 
cheer 
Like dew on dying flow'rs ; when, lo. 

The timid Dawn her dream-gauze 
mere 
Cast off, and blushed in glowing light. 



Her gloried path-floods glowed and shone 
Thro' craggy clefts whose gold did 
gleam 
To melting margins where she trod 
'Mid thronging spirit-forms o'erflown 
With crimson splendor's dazzling 
flood. 
Amid that phantom-troop of dawn, 

Whose wings with ecstasies of God 
Soft flushed in radiance supreme. 



225 



That joy transformed, my raptured eyes 
Beheld, to Heaven's deathless light, 
That in the night-floods of despair 
I lost in that vast vale of sighs. 

Here shrined in hues divinely fair, 
It found its haven in the skies. 

But hark ! That music of the air, 
That swells its harmony's delight, 



Throbs thro' the flood of splendor thrilled 
To God's great Love-throne trembling 
borne ; 
And from its spirit-symphonies 
A wondrous strain my sorrow filled ; 

For there 'mid Heaven's rhapsodies 
That love-hjonn once so sadly stilled 
In woe, awoke its ecstasies 
Divine in love's own glory-morn. 



226 



WITHOUT THEE. 

So far from thee, the depth of gloom 
That fold on fold about me lies, 
Seems blacker still with mingled light, 
Like dreams of joy enshrined in doom: 
For Mem'ry shows with flashings 

bright 
Those blisses vivid sunk in night, — 
The darkened walls of life that rise — 



My weird uncertain prison sad. 
As sinks the trembling trav'ler lone, 
Deep-buried in night's murky thrall, 
'Neath raging storm with fury mad. 

And sees the crashing trees downfall 
And splintered rocks, and in the pall 
Of lightning's flash, the ruin prone. 



22rr 



And after-blackness feels more dread: 
So flashing with eternal might, 
These mem'ry-gleams of passion's 
pain, 
That mad, soul-thrilling dream now fled, 
Flame through the night of woeful 

bane 
And east me in its depths again. 
My grieving soul, to see the blight 



Spread o'er those hov'ring dreams above. 
Must burst! 'Tis vain, sad heart, to 
yearn 
And strive in wild, distracted dream 
To clasp her form, to die in love. 

Or faint, o'ercome with bliss supreme, 
And dream that life and pain but 
seem: 
For she is gone, — ne'er to return. 



228 



God gave thy love : but ah, the woe, 
That night when strayed I wild and 
lone. 
That tore my anguished heart and 
thine, 
And life lay crushed in poisoned throe ! 
Shall I at last to grief resign ? 
Come, dearest, steep thy soul in 
mine, — 
Here rest in love. My Own, My Own! 



229 



THE TEAR. 

Soft as an angel's stolen breath, 

Hush as a moanless dream of peace 
To the fevered brain aswoon in death ; 
Or the breathless dawn that blushes 

still; 

In the sobf ul gloam thy tear athrill 

With sweet love-light that 'lumes thy 

face, 

The vibrant night o'erflushed until 

It glowed with sorrow's tend 'rest grace. 



Calm as the star-beam burns thro' night, 

Swift as the dawning leaps on high. 
As the hush of music's pulsing flight 
O'er a tranced woe in dreams en- 
thralled, 
To my wildered heart in grief em- 
palled, 
So swift the light and tear-song fly ; 
And quiv'ring o'er my soul-chords, 
hold 
My grief entranced in harmony. 

230 



YOUTH'S VISION. 
To D. 

As bursts some scene of beauty bright, 

Of autumn shades and hues, 
Lit by the day's last gleam of light 
Whose splendor softly blends with night 
Where fall the early dews, — 



Upon the wond'ring gaze of one 

Who thoughtless oft had passed,- 
Departing now when day was done. 
He viewed the scene at setting sun. 
Its glories fading fast, — 



Or as a flower perfect, rare. 

Apart unnoticed stood, 
Divine in structure, wondrous fair. 
Aglow with Heaven's flushes dear. 

Charming the solitude, — 



231 



When, fostered 'neath love's sunny dew, 

Its odor-breathing bloom 
Outrivaled all in blended hue, 
The sweetest flow'r that ever grew 

With cheer to light the gloom : 



So she, a radiant vision sent, 

A dream of rapture pure. 
For moments lent of sweet content, 
To grace the gloom, the day o'erspent, 

And life to love allure. 



Shone sudden on my startled sight, — 

A creature from above. 
Youth's evening glories' flushing light 
Revealed a soul divinely bright 

And won my silent love. 



From eyes unf athomed the soul-might 

Of passion pure outshines : 
My tranced soul in dark delight 
Lifes faint and still, in bonds the night 
Of love's long grief entwines. 

232 



NATURE'S DIVINITY. 
I wandered to-day far from tumult and 
sorrow 
To Nature's deep shrine where the 
strange solitude, 
Like the ambient air, floated roimd me, 
to borrow 
That sympathy mystic, life's e'er- 
failing food; 
Where souls freed from earth-bonds to 

Heaven can rise. 
And men become gods spirit-throned in the 
skies. 

I sought a lone bower where dews of the 
morning 
Lay sparkling half -hidden in manifold 
shade. 

Where simlight scarce darted thro' ver- 
dure, adorning 
With orbed-gold lustre the green of the 
glade ; 

Where redolent airs breathe in soft, 
voiceless might 

And mingle with flow 'rets their vernal 
delight. 

283 



In dew-refreshed morn soft the silence 
stole o'er me — 
All soundless the world, save the mur- 
muring brook, 
Whose mild-gurgling echoes attractive 
allure me, 
Vain striving its secret to find in each 
nook 
Where it ripples in sunbeams or flows still 

and darkling 
Thro' shadowed rock-caverns with glint- 
ing and sparkling. 



Such silence is blessed. Its soul-fining 
spirit, 
Unknown to man, mingles, 'neath har- 
mony's law, 

With the few tranced minds who forever 
endear it 
With strange adoration the spirit doth 
draw 

From worlds of dull substance to realms 
of mere joy 

Where never man's thraldom and strife 
the soul cloy. 

284 



Oh, might divine ardor of Nature's pure 
passion 
Illume the souPs prison of dense, mucid 
gloom. 

Where man chained with self-love or 
custom's oppression 
Sits peaceful nor murmurs tho' Greed 
speaks his doom 

With a vile curse of misery, hunger, dis- 
tress, 

To trammels of toiling grief, groans, 
wretchedness. 



Oh, light the gloamed minds with thy 

beauteous vision. 
The void of man 's prison, O Spirit 

illume. 
Till Hope and Love roused, our yearnings 

elysian 
Shall rise to divineness of joy ; and life's 

gloom, 
In radiance pure of Desire's creant might 
ShaU glow in joy's dawning with love's 

stainless light. 



235 



DEJECTION. 

ToD. 

So cold is life, so weird and dark, 
To me a dream unending seems, — 
A flash of light, a dying spark 
That vividly upon the sight, 
Like love, a fleeting moment gleams 
Then vanishes and pales with fright; 
But shows, with evanescent beams. 
Of things the murky, thickened gloom. 
Which have no being yet appear 
As sounds and shapes in visions' flight. 
And dim impress life's loftier doom 
Upon the senses dulled in night 
That e'er receive with awful fear 
The dreaded spirit-sound or sight, — 
Then lapse to sleep from lifeless strife 
To be awaked at love's dark cheer. 
To some in doomed, luckless plight, 
So weird, it seemeth more like death, — 
A rending strife 'twixt dark and light. 
So dreaming, seeming, thro' our life 
We pass along, and think and dream 

286 



Of joy and grief,— a throned Strife, 

That e'er against our senses dull. 

Drawn from her skyey-hidden sheath 

Doth hurl with sudden pow'r supreme 

Some atom of the infinite plan 

Evolved from the Almighty's breath: 

We start up from our listless plight, — 

But dreamy sink, while senses lull 

The soul with sights and sounds, — the bane 

Of spirit- joys that hopeless w£Cne. 

In stormy passion's raging flight 

The mem'ry-scorged soul would rove, — 

A winged love that thro' the night 

Exhausted beats its pinions vain 

In gloaming tempest's hurling winds. 

Its tireful, maddened throbbings cease 

In senseless, endless strife, — ^no peace : 

But fluttering ever in its pain 

It seeks with storm to rise again. 

So is the soul. Its spirit-love 

No rest from wild 'ring passion finds. 

But crushed in life's reality. 

Earth-crazed, it seeks some reachless rest : 

Like autumn leaves that in the swirl 

Of swelling streamlets writhe and whirl ; 

A helmless phanton-ship wild-tossed, 

237 



Forsaken on ocean's raging breast; 
Beaten and torn on the seething sea 
Of wild 'ring, black mortality; 
Wild-driv'n thro' the welt 'ring wave 
By some sonl-strif e of darted love, — 
Until the deep, Eternity 
Receives it, welcome with its own, — 
Our sightless doom, our viewless Throne. 



238 



MELANCHOLY. 

Thou deep, dark world of throbbing grief, 
Thou Pow'r! Chained in thy dismal 

thrall. 
My human soul doth writhe and strain 
To reach yon mocking beam of light. 
Still struggle. Eend thyself in vain. 
C\ that thy anguish crushed belief, — 
Tiiy arrowed pain so dense in pall 
Enwrapped thee, — so intense the blight 
No human sense could feel life's bane! 



Engulf me deeper in thy might, 
Till mind, consumed in thy fierce bane. 
Is freed from strife of life and death, 
Of joy and grief. As when a cloud. 
Blackened with night, whirls in the 

breath 
Of Tempest-king, in dark delight. 
Till lightning's flash like writhing pain 
Shivers and rives its sphered shroud, — 
So rends my soul its fear and faith. 

239 



LONELINESS. 

To D, 

Oh, that thy silence endless, sad 
To my lone soul that else were glad, 
Should break o'er realms of loneliness 
So black and void whose cheerlessness 
Is seen and felt, as harsh or faint 
Some sight or sound or feeling taint 
Of silence black the dismal reign, 
Like fevered roarings of the brain. 
And make the blackness more intense, — 
A silence striking rude the sense ! 
As Orphean music burst the pall 
Of Night and Hell, enchanting thrall 
Of gods and doom, so would thy voice 
Make sadness, fate itself rejoice 
And soulless Nature 'mid life 's gloom 
Start up in welcome from joy's tomb. 
As one benighted in the wilds 
Who strives with fear till sleep beguiles 
His straining eyes, when, awed in dreams 
He starts up cheered in morn's broad 
beams, — 

240 



Or as the heavens cease their fast 
And on parched verdure withering cast 
Shed copious draughts of thermal pow'r 
And save the marcid, languished flow'r, — 
As tears, quick-flowing, hearts relieve 
That suffered grief but could not grieve, 
So burst the blackness thro' the years 
Impalled with nameless spectral fears 
That haunt the burdened creeping hours 
Like doubt that hope and faith devours. 
Oh, speak! Thy voice, tho' far, to me 
Were as the harbor-bells at sea 
To hopeless bark wild-tempest driv'n, 
The doom of wrathful earth and Heav'n. 
Oh, speak! Thou art as cold and far 
As joy, or yon dim-quav'ring star 
That 'mid earth-mists that palling low'r 
Flames paly gleams night's shrouds 

devour. — 
So fade my visions in love's pall. 
Save 'neath the gleam of mem'ry's thrall 
That pain and sorrow vivify 
And feed like wreathing darks that vie 
About the soul's dim flames that shine 
Thro' glooms that haunt my Dream 

Divine. 

241 



THE LAST DAWN. 

Slow creeping from bemisted clouds 

Dark shadows lowered from the pall 
Of dying day whose settling shrouds 
Entombed the forsaken east. 
In moanful threnodies the gust 
Drives hoarse the plashing rains that 
fall 
Thro' moveless vapors' torpid rest. 



Amid the city's ragings dire 

Whose rabid pulses teemed with men 
Half -maddened by their fierce desire 

And ruthless greed, there wandered 

lone 
A weary wight so heedless grown 
Of rushing life, he felt no pain 
Of spurning blows or taunting tone 



242 



Of jeer and curse. His feet astray, 

Infirm with years of struggling grief, 
Scarce bore him thro' the jostling fray. 
His darkened brain unconscious 

teems 
With ebb and surge, like fitful 
dreams, 
Till sense is lost in wild belief, — 
Then starts in life's consuming 
gleams. 



So, lost in mystic worlds, he swerves 
O'er scoflSng streets. The rankling 
strife 
Of chills that quiver o'er his nerves 
Convulsive strikes his deadened 

brain. 
Long has he borne the anguished 
bane, — 
The slow disease of feverous life ; 
Long felt gaunt Hunger's gnawing 
pain, 



243 



The tortures of earth's countless ills, 

The palsied pangs of maddening cold, 
That rived the writhing nerves with thrills 
Of stupor strange the senses stirred. 
No smile he knew, no tender word. 
No love of wife or child enfold 
His restless head. No song he heard 



Of warmth and home. No tear was shed 

For him amid the heartless throng; 
And human sympathy was dead. 

And himian smiles were stoned in 

greed. 
In night his forlorn heart would 
bleed, — 
To silence lisp his moanful song, 
And desolation be his meed. 



244 



Men puffed with fulsome luxury 

And swollen blind with glutton-greed, 
Him whom Jehovah made to be 

A king on earth, ^'a beast" they style, 
^^Who fed on refuse, sweepings vile. 
And lived in musty rags, whose bed 
Was some ash-heap or garbage pile." 



What mockery of human life ! 

What shameless guilt of haggish crime ! 
What feculence of human strife 

That rots thy carious, fleshy feasts 
With putrid self I The groveling 
beasts 
Could tutor man entoiled in grime 
Of flesh the soul in fetters casts. 



245 



The weird night passed. The torrent 
streams 
Poured cold and ruthless as the dawn, 
Thro' haze gray-tinged with sulking 
beams. 
The whiffling winds in sobf ul chill 
Moaned o'er a nerveless form and 
still, 
A love-lumed brow with suffering wan, 
A throbless heart beyond life's ill. 



No voice for him doth raise its wail. 

No silent tear embittered fall; 
And o'er that brow in slumber pale 

Scorn's heedless minions breathe no 

sigh. 
The soughing winds shall moan and 
die; 
The surging mists shall form his pall, 
And rain-drops chant their monody. 



246 



No requiem hymn, ye mortal choirs : 
Your mocking songs but breathe your 
doom. 
But hearken to those heav'nly lyres > 

That waft to bliss the souls ye spurn. 
Their pains of earth that skyward 
yearn 
And darks of grief, doth Heav'n illume 
To radiant joys of waking morn. 



Ye glutton-hordes. Oh, wail and weep, 

For woe shall mock your pleasures rife. 
The cankering gold ye gloating keep 

Is forged to rankling gyves that burn 
The writhing soul. mortals, 
mourn, 
And chant your dirge of human strife. 
That surges souls to death's black 
bourn I 



247 



OCTOBER. 

How drear gray Morn in misty clouds 
Ascends her throne, like one who grieves 
For some lost glory, and whose tears 
Her lustrous eyes veil in dull shrouds 
Of darkling grief ! How still the leaves, 
Scarce quiv'ring in the sobful breath 
Of fainting Summer whose love-fears 
Have dulled her panting heart's still 

bliss, — 
Soft, lovely bride who swoons to death 
'Neath Autumn's chilly marriage-kiss! 



The day in deep-veiled sorrow frowns. 
And Nature mourns her fairest 's death 
In moanful voices love-subdued. 
The poison-air no more resounds 
With gleesome song ; his blighting breath 
Has made of Summer's bridal dress 
A shriveled mantle sombre-hued. 
Where lonely, hollow winds bewail 
The vanished light and loveliness, — 
Like memory when passions fail. 

248 



I too am mourning thro* the night 
Of foregone joy, — of beauty lost. 
My fevered heart, like Siunmer, wed 
To wilder ed, pulsing love's delight, — 
An eagle in storm-rage fierce-tossed 
In lofty joyance, — felt no fear 
Of after-calm, so drear and dead; 
But strives in vain for visioned skies, 
And pining at its doomed bier, 
Kissed by love's Autiunn sorrow, — dies. 



249 



THE LONELY SONGSTER 

Lone creature of the silent forest-ways, 
How sadly dost thou linger here forlorn ! 

Summer is gone, and tuneful sunny days 
Have spent their splendor— all their 
joys outworn. 



Thy mate has vanished to a warmer realm, 
As mine has left me for some gayer 
sphere, 
Here where the autumn mists thy songs 
o'erwhelm. 
As mine are stifled with misfortunes 
drear. 



Thy plumage once so gorgeous in the fire 
Of flashing sunbeams now is dulled and 
gray, 
Like youth that riseth thrilled with high 
desire 
And sinketh wan and weary with the 
day. 

250 



Thou shouldst not mope and droop in vain 
despair — 
Thou hast thy pinions ; and beyond the 
cold 
Of dismal winter, in some Eden fair 
Of summer south-lands there is bliss 
untold. 



Oh, hasten thither; leave our bleak 
domain, 
As I must quit this vain and empty 
strife ; 
And when the next glad springtime comes 
again 
Return in robes renewed with gorgeous 
life. 

Sweet May will come once more with all 
her blooms, 
The sun will smile again with warmth 
and cheer, 
The sky will tint her clouds with hued 
illumes. 
And thou and I will bless the gracious 
year. 

251 



And thou shalt sing thy rapturous refrain, 
With swelling heart a-quiver all with 

joy, 
That sunshine and the flow'rs have come 
again, 
With nests and food and love without 
alloy. 



I, too, will sing in some wild ecstasy 
To soulful Beauty all my lonely strain, 

That man shall yet as happy be as thee — 
In Universal Love's triumphant reign. 



E^ 252 



PRELUDE. 

Go to my love and bid her arise 
To worship with me in radiant skies : 
With a whisper of passion, 

A love-lorn refrain, 
That fancy doth fashion 
From rapture and pain. 



Go to the world and bid it to hear 
A sky-failing tone of music's despair 
With a hymn to the duty 

Of life and desire. 
The strange spirit-beauty 
My soul doth inspire. 



258 



INTERLUDE. 

Like daylight. sweet to wilder ed dream. 

Like silence after melody, 
Like solemn night that soothes the gleam 

Of sun's too-dazzling brilliancy-— 
So dost thou come, fair magic blest, 
Enticing with some fleeting rest. 



Like calm that follows mighty storm, 

Like peace o'er passion's thrilling woes, 
Like sleep that lulls, with tender charm. 

The day's long joyance to repose- 
So soothing spell, with tranquil art. 
Enchant to rest my wearied heart. 



254 



POSTLUDE. 

A flash of light through clouds of night, 
A voice from silence golden, 

A waning scent from flowers spent 
By dying airs enf olden : 



A thought of joy in grief's alloy, 

A radiant vision failing, 
A triumph-strain low-hushed in pain 

A dream of passion paling : 



Oh, feeble hymn, oh, beauty dim. 
Oh, tender strain love-sighing. 

Inspire some heart with heav'nly art 
To live whilst thou art dying. 



255 



REDEEMED 



FOREWOED. 

In the wonderful life of Jesus Christ, 
with its vital grasp of all human states 
and interests, the themes of eternal truth 
in thought and action, are almost infinite. 
The greatest of all is Love. Another is 
self-sacrifice. A third is the false exulta- 
tion of wealth; and a fourth, the final 
blessedness of humility. 

With such considerations this Story- 
Poem deals ; but all conceptions ultimately 
blend in human and divine affection, which 
alone produces earthly happiness. 

The salvation of the meek is thus the 
dominant chord of our humble symphony. 
This regeneration arises in lowly affec- 
tion, proceeds through suffering and sac- 
rifice, and reaches its perfection in uni- 
versal love — broadened, exalted, glorified 
by divine favor or miraculous reward. 

The reader's indulgence must be 
granted in permitting fanciful deviations 
from the meagre historic narrative of 
Christ's life. Our justification is that 

259 



this poem does not consist of the facts 
of human history, but of the illustrations 
of divine truth. 

That truth reveals the utter folly and 
futility of the raging conflict now involv- 
ing every human interest. The hopeless 
opposition of contending classes is shown 
to be a weak and absurd fallacy. The rich 
need not revel in luxury, nor the poor 
suffer in want — conditions equal in social 
disaster. 

We must bring these discordant ele- 
ments to peace, unity, sympathy. Our 
salvation from the consuming curse is pos- 
sible only through the power of boundless 
charity, that turns this baneful strife to 
joyous brotherhood, with universal bless- 
ing. 

In that marvelous world of the Christ- 
Love, all human contentions blend in one 
ideal state of spirit-beauty. Here pride 
is debased, humility exalted, suffering 
recompensed and sacrifice rewarded, in 
the vast harmony of that universal law — 
*^The Infinite Love of God." 

Benjamin F. Fisher. 

260 



IMMORTAL LOVE. 

Immortal Love, celestial birth, 
God's richest gift to human life. 

Enthrone thy triumph-reign on earth 
Abandoned to its selfish strife. 

Like sunlight-floods pour o'er our hearts 

The thrill divine thy grace imparts. 



Immortal Christ, thou soul of Love, 
Thou slave divine of earthly poor. 

Descend again from bliss above. 
Commanding us to love once more. 

Thy deathless spirit still inspire 

Our hearts with passion's radiant fire! 



261 



Immortal Beauty, whose design 

From God's own being took its form 

With secret pow'r our souls refine 
To grasp the meaning of thy charm — 

To find revealed in every mood 

The essence both of Love, and God. 



Immortal Spirit, thou whose grace 
Has given world and law and life, 

How dare we come before Thy face 
With stains and wounds of mortal 
strife ! 

How shall we live below, above, 

Without thee, wondrous Human Love? 



262 



A new commandment 

I give unt© you, 

That ye love one another. 



REDEEMED 

Dark wreathed the night of heathen 

thought about 
The struggling twilight of a holier morn ; 
And mighty, yearning souls sought God 

in vain, 
With reason darkened in a maze of doubt. 
Then rose a soul of heavenly essence born 
The one revealing force of God to man, — 
A flash of Light, a thrill of beauteous Pain 
That trembled o 'er the heart of Love for- 
lorn, 
And bade it rise with radiance divine 
In triumph o'er the universe to reign. 

He wandered lonely as a poet's dream 
'Mid wildered ways, 'mid smiles and tears 

of man. 
He sought in gloom the poor, the blind and 

lone ; 
In hovels dark where ne'er had shone the 

gleam 
Of love and joy. He raised the forehead 

wan, 

265 



The pale, drooped eyes He lit with hope^s 

bright cheer. 
Grief changed to joy, to song the wretch's 

moan. 
The humble pining low 'neath misery's 

ban 
He praised exalted ; wealth and pride aai- 

stere 
Condemned debased. Of Love He reared 

His throne. 



When evening's shadows cold and silent 

creep, 
Like phantoms weird, o'er gloried earth 

and sky, 
And black-veiled night with stains of 

deep 'ning gloom 
Doth mingle mystic charms of hush and 

sleep, — 
Lo, Jesus, listless of the darkness nigh. 
Lingers alone, lost in some hidden maze 
Of sorrowed love for man in his self -doom, 
Nor feels the gath'ring night and chill. His 

eye 

266 



Cast pensive down, like one whose fixed 

gaze 
Strives vain to pierce the mystery of the 

tomb. 



The settling darkness roused His languid 

sense : 
Benighted, shelterless. He paused in 

doubt. 
Along the highway hedged with sombre 

walls, 
A mass of solid masonry immense 
Shone gray 'mid darker verdure wreathed 

about. 
As if to shield secure from human sight 
The wide domain and chambered palace- 
halls 
In foliage hid, whose domes and spires 

reached out 
Like dusking shades thrust skyward 

through the night. 
The taper's brilliance through the lattice 

falls, 

267 



And barred glim 'rings o'er the broad way 
creep, 

Soon lost among the hov'ring shades of 
night. 

A-chill with dank night dews, the wand'rer 
worn. 

Amazed stood, as one from some deep 
sleep 

Arouses dazed in bursting sun floods 
bright. 

His haloed face some strange soul-fires il- 
lume. 

Some passion radiant of love grief -born, 

That floods the circling darks with spirit 
light. 

And blushes through the shrouds of strug- 
gling gloom. 

Thus Jesus stands, in wealth's delight for- 
lorn. 

^^Here will I knock and shelter ask," said 

He; 
* ' The night is chill and dark, but what glad 

cheer 
Doth reign within where weary pilgrims 

there 

268 



May find a haven warm nor burden be 
To one whom God hath blessed from year 

to year." 
So fell those words that soft as summer's 

breath 
Flushed tenderly along the quiv'ring air, 
Like fainting dreams of spirit music near, 
Or some soul-harmony, serene in death. 
That skyward rises free from life's de- 
spair. 

He is despised and rejected of men; A man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we 
hid as it were our faces from Him. 

A raucous voice harsh-pinched with 
crabbed greed 

The Pilgrim's wishes asked in tones se- 
vere, 

^*Who gloats in wonder o'er my rich do- 
mainT' 

Christ, meek in holy grandeur, told his 
need, 

In words soft breathed that Nature 
stooped to hear : 

That Night, all tone and motion ceasing, 
hushed, 



Dumb with despair and grief that rose 

again 
From Christ's heart wounded: in His eye 

a tear 
Of holy suffering stood, with glory flushed 
From some diviner world of spirit-pain. 



This kindness asked, the rich man cast his 

leer, 
Half turned in scorn, the wand 'ring God 

to greet. 
His piercing glance, like blight on autumn 

flow'rs, 
Or bane to happy love consumed with fear, 
Scowls mocking from Christ's face to 

weary feet : 
And crafty in deceit he quick conceived 
The vagrant to be wretched poor, and 

low'rs 
Upon his garments stained in dust and 

heat 
And rent with nameless works in tears 

achieved 
And mighty love, divine with God-lent 

pow'rs. 

270 



''Mj rooms are full of gold and treasure 

vast: 
I harbor not vile thieves among my store !" 
His hoarse voice grated with the gate's 

harsh grind 
That scourged the writhing air with scath- 

ful blast. 
As passed he, smiling at its sullen roar, 
The light-flood broad that through the por- 
tal flowed 
An instant lingered, like a surging wind 
That in a summer-midnight flushes o'er, 
With timid breath, the sleeping solitude, — 
Then leaves the heavy night sunk dull and 
blind. 



With tender pity lofty as the skies. 

The pilgrim started on His lightless way. 

The vapored night breathed blight from 

day's dark tomb, 
So dense He scarce the black-hedged way 

descries. 
The hidden stones His shoeless feet astray 
With every halting step bruised cruelly. 

271 



His great soul-passion thrilled the doleful 
gloom, 

Who cared not save the Spirit to obey 

That e'er impelled through ceaseless 
agony 

To death's great sorrow, — last and glori- 
ous doom. 



At length, a faint ray cleaves the darkness 

cold, 
And glimmers feebly through the wreath- 
ing pall. 
To guide Him fait 'ring to the hidden goal. 
Yet can He not the shelter dark behold, 
Now swallowed by the shades that darker 

fall. 
So sank His hope, while doubts and fears 

arose 
To thrall in waste despair the struggling 

soul. 
Yet, faint and worn. He still with fresh 

avail 
Fares onward where the taper tranquil 

glows, 

272 



A distant star where night-mists veiling 
roll. 

Abide with us: for it is towards evening, and 
the day is far spent. And He went in to 
tarry with them. 



Scarce can He labor to the little door 
Up-looming in the walls' more sombre 

gray, 
O'ershimmered by the flaring flame that 

shone 
And nightly through the lattice-chinks did 

pour 
Barred light-streams pale to guide the 

wanderer's way. 
It was a lowly cot of aged poor, 
Where two for many years had dwelt 

alone. 
The dust-stained pilgrim, wearied with the 

day, 
Did ne'er in vain a shelter warm implore. 
'Tis said they loved all life more than 

their own. 

273 



Ere He to knock His nerveless hand could 



raise, 



The door swung wide : outburst a flood of 
cheer, 

Of warmth and joy, alarming the dull 
night 

That fled encircling far, like misted maze 

At early dawn, and wreathed about in fear. 

Now glowed the realm with tender radi- 
ance, 

Where Christ aweary, dazzled in the light, 

Stood speechless, while a love-rewarding 
tear 

Flushed that sweet face with soulful elo- 
quence 

That thrilled along the still-awed air of 
night. 



With voices love-subdued the aged pair 
Poured forth a wealth of soul-breathed 

welcome free : 
*^The night is cold and dark; thy weary 

feet 
Can journey now no further; enter here. 
And rest thy tired limbs, and solaced be. 

274 



Our store, though slight, is all at thy com- 
mand. 

For God doth give our daily warmth and 
meat, 

And what He hath vouchsafed, we give to 
thee." 

Not waiting for reply, His fevered hand 

They, leading, clasp, — their happiness 
complete. 



As one who, in the meshes of some dream, 
Toils fainting, o'er a wild and pathless 

way, 
And feels fatigue's slow pang and cold de- 
spair 
Stifle with blighting pain the thought's 

dull stream. 
While hope and fear impel his feet astray 
And drive him on o'er hills and wastes 

forlorn, 
O 'er rocks and streams and wretched des- 
erts drear. 
Till he, at last, resigned to dire dismay. 
Starts, trembling in the calm of home and 
morn,— 

275 



So, Christ consoled, his grief reposed in 
cheer. 

For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: 
I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a 
stranger, and ye took me in. 



The matron old, with anxious, willing 
hand, 

A plenty took from their scant fund and 
poor 

Of meal coarse-ground but fresh and sav- 
ory sweet. 

And mixed with water lucid, pure, ob- 
tained 

From welling spring the fathers built of 
yore. 

Prom stocks and branches dry, in waning 
days 

Slow gathered, 'neath the summer's burn- 
ing heat, 

All withered from the mountain's meagre 
store. 

She made a transient fire whose sparkling 
blaze 

Red-flared amid the dancing shadows fleet, 

276 



Some locusts sweet with loaves of barley 

meal, 
Some wild figs dried, — the last of their 

supply,— 
With fish preserved in oil of olives sweet 
Composed the fare. But no want could 

dispel 
The loveful joy that from some spirit-sky 
Reflected in their faces' glorious light. 
As when one travels lone with weary feet 
Where passing siunmer with her sobful 

sigh 
Leads o'er the glowing earth the north 

wind's blight 
With sudden gusts of chilling rain and 

sleet, — 



When bursts, triumphant from the cloud- 
bound sphere. 

The sun, aglow with radiant smiles of love 

More splendid in the scattering vapor's 
flight, 

And fills the wanderer with gracious 
cheer, — 

So shone Christ's brow with radiance from 

277 



above. 
As when the ardent, panting thought and 

dream 
Reach out soul-yearning for far love's de- 

light 
Which sudden thrills the heart, with fears 

inwove, 
Till life and joy and pain false visions 

seem, 
So seemed the transport of that raptured 

night. 



When all had taken of the glad repast. 
And pale the Pilgrim leaned in ember's 

glow,— 
As in some maze of soul, too vast and deep 
For human thought, He strayed entoiled 

and lost, — 
The happy pair, with eager words 

breathed low. 
Conspired to bless with cheer and sweet 

content. 
And when with viewless wings soft-flitting 

Sleep 

278 



'Mid lurking glooms and shadows dark- 

'ning slow, 
Doth charm to magic rest the spirits faint, 
And soothing languors o'er the senses 

creep, 



They gently lead Him, 'mid remonstrance 
vain 

Soft-hushed in breathed words of sooth- 
ing love. 

To where, in deep'ning gloam, the lowly 
cot 

Gray-tinged stood in fire-light's pallid 
wane : 

Then creep, all noiseless, to the low alcove 

Adjoining 'neath whose arches plastered 

To scanty store of grain and fruit devote, 
They lie upon the scattered straw, nor 

move. 
Nor sink in dull repose, but watch and 

pray, 
Perplexed in fevered maze of wild 'ring 

thought. 

279 



Day burst at length in stainless splendor 

vast. 
In such gold floods the sunlight ne'er has 

flown, 
Save at the dawn of Resurrection near 
That through slow time its irised light now 

cast 
To greet a Glory brigther than its own. 
In joy that memory cherished ever bright 
The scant repast was eaten in love's cheer. 
The Lord inspired with strength anew, 

there shone 
A glowing halo of strange spirit-light, 
And crowned the brow that bloody thorns 

should tear. 



Still ling 'ring on the threshold ere they 

part. 
Like winged bliss that quivers o'er the 

soul. 
That voice that bade the thund'rous waves 

be still 
Now thrills with pulsing joy the list'ning 

heart, — 
And 'er all nature breathes a spirit-thrall. 

280 



He softly bids His hosts but speak a 
prayer, 

Wbicli, ere the words be formed, He 
should fulfill 

Though they like gods should wish the 
sun's control. 

They knew not what to ask, their sole de- 
sire 

To feel of self-denial the raptured thrill. 



And constant peace deep as the blue of 
heav'n, — 

A hidden stream that never wane had 
known. 

So great their meed of peace and happi- 
ness 

They knew no wish that heaven had not 
giv'n. 

But soft as glow of soul-desire there shone 

A gleam of hope that flushed with early 

Joy 
The aged woman's brow: the wan distress 
Of Pilgrims wretched wand 'ring cold and 

lone 

i 281 



Oft did with grief their loving hearts an- 
noy 

That house and store too scanty were to 
bless. 



Christ felt the wish and happy, went His 
way. 

With wild, delightful madness softly 
seized 

They sank into a strange, entrancing 
dream. 

Unseen and mighty gleamed the broade- 
ning day. 

How long they stood with joyous frenzy 
dazed. 

And what weird visions strange of bliss 
and light 

Delirious whirled them down wild fancy's 
stream, 

They knew not. Long they lingered all'- 
amazed 

With myriad thoughts and hopes and 
mem'ries bright 

Of long-forgotten years, where joys su- 
preme 

282 



In early love and youth's delight had 

shone. 
Again the warm life tingled in each vein ; 
The dimmed eyes sparkled with a glory 

mild, 
Like autmnn's lustre faint when day has 

flown. 
The wrinkled brow with rapture flushed 

again 
As morn's sweet face when winter dark 

has fled : 
The languid form of age was soft beguiled 
To grace and beauty. As with ne'er a 

stain 
O'er gilded clouds the dawning 's glories 

spread, 
Youth's new-born radiance glowed unde- 

filed. 

His flesh shall be fresher than a child's: he 
shall return to the days of his youth. 

As when in Autumn's sobful breath the 

leaves, 
In wild, fierce joyance rise in mazy whirls, 
Wildered in frenzied glee, like spirits 

freed 

283 



From some far realm whence new bliss 
aimless drives ; 

Or as the lark, in panting transport, hurls 

Through lure of startled dawn its pas- 
sioned flight, 

Whose gushing raptures ne'er the wild 
winds heed, 

Maddened with joy, be:wildered in the 
swirls 

Of misted sun-fire, — so, in weird delight 

Of ravished sense, did age in glad youth 
fade. 



The mem'ry of the life just passed away 
Was like some distant, half-forgotten 

dream 
Confused in waking thought. They knew 

their guest 
Had backward turned, with some Gl-od- 

given sway, 
The ebbing course of life's receding 

stream. 
They questioned not, but knew their youth 

restored 
To cheer the needy with their service blest ; 

284 



To feed the hungry ; fill with hope supreme 
The friendless, joyless souls whom Christ 

adored, 
And thrill earth's suffering life with love 

and rest. 



From mingled thoughts' and dreams' 
strange ecstasy 

They turned upon the threshold to their 
cot, 

And found it vanished, where there sud- 
den rose, 

Prom out a sphere of rainbowed radiancy, 

A mansion such as man has never wrought. 

Its august grandeur tow 'red in simple 
state, 

Where nauseous luxury's disgusting 
shows 

And coarse displays with pompous trum- 
pery fraught. 

Degraded not its matchless grace elate 

With strength's supreme and infinite re- 
pose. 

285 



The walls, with casements op'ning high 

and wide, 
Of gray basalt green-tinged and polished 

clear, 
Were graced with pilasters of lustrous 

white, 
Of marble brought o'er the Aegean tide. 
The gorgeous capitals from Corinth far 
Upheld a jutting frieze whose flowing 

stream 
Of sculptured thought, whose very glooms 

were bright. 
Inspired the gazing soul with love and 

cheer : 
'Twas like an artist's wild, soul-fashioned 

dream, — 
A wondrous realm of beauty and delight. 

And He built His sanctuary like high palaces, 
like the earth which He hath established for- 
ever. 

Fair porticoes, God-wrought, of Grecian 

mold 
Their tap 'ring columns upreared to the 

sky, 

286 



Where morn's and even's sun on east and 

west 
Could pour in flushing floods its glorious 

gold. 
The shafts in massive strength that could 

defy 
Or awe in wonder the fell storms of time, 
From far Aegina's blue-robed mounts 

cloud-fleeced, 
Of amber veined marble, tow 'ring high, 
Their Doric capitals upheld sublime 
Like clouds upon some ice-robed mountain 

crest. 



Their every fluting seemed a still delight 
And every line a sweet, mute melody. 
The pediments by spirit sculptors formed 
Were throned aloft in glowing grace and 

light. 
Each living form of radiant majesty, 
Or plastic carven scene of bliss and woe 
Were chosen from His gloried life trans- 
formed 

287 



Who thrilled the world with new-born ec- 
stasy. 

In morning's blush pr twilight's tremu- 
lous glow 

Their splendor pure the dazzled vision 
charmed. 



The spacious rooms in simple majesty, 
With some strange power of mighty love 

athrill, 
Were perfect realms of tender rest and 

cheer. 
The lights intone some deep soul harmony, 
And all the air its raptured meanings fill 
With mystic pow 'r ; they on the scroll of 

life 
Carve deep that Law of Love in import 

clear 
That he who heard could ne'er escape their 

spell ; 
In weal or woe, in happiness or grief, 
That hymn of World-Wide Passion sound- 
ed near. 

288 



He will make her wilderness like Eden, and 
her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy 
and gladness shall be found therein, thanks- 
giving and the voice of melody. 

About the ample court in deep-cast shade, 

Embow'red from summer's burning noon- 
day heat, 

In copious verdure 'mid the rich-hid 
glooms, 

The purple grape, where denser darks per- 
vade, 

Hung lush and cool, round-swool'n with 
juicy sweet. 

Here, 'neath the quiv'ring leaves serene 
alcove, 

Inclasping gloam and light in faint il- 
lumes, 

Eeposed the toiling wand'rer's glad re- 
treat. 

Fair bow'rs, soft-screened from dazzling 
noon, inwove 

Their mazy courses massed with fragrant 
blooms. 

Enthralling solitude and rest serene. 
Fair gardens with the rainbow's hues 
aglow, 

289 



A-teem with deathless flowers' faint per- 
fumes, 

Suffused with radiant tints the sombrous 
green. 

Soft-wild 'ring paths 'neath still trees 
arching low 

Wound o'er the mossy knoll or tangled 
dell, 

Where spreading ferns obscure the peep- 
ing blooms 

Soft-blushing in the air's carressing flow; 

Or through the gardens where hued glows 
dispel 

With magic power the lurking twilight 
glooms, 



Their labyrinths ran, disclosing e'er un- 
seen 

Delights that lure the mind from languor's 
thrall. 

In rocky dells deep-flowered and dark-en- 
mossed 

Soft-spraying founts their rippling glad 
refrain 

290 



In rock-nooks darkning sang to birds' low 

call. 
The fig tree wild, luxuriant hung its bell 
Just tinged with sunlight, 'mid its leaves 

embossed. 
The orange, golden in its lustrous swell, 
Its various hues in dark green doth im- 
pale 
Of waxed leaves with glancing sunlight 
glossed. 



The teeming olive's placid branches lie 
Low-drooped with fracid fruit in violet 

wane, 
'Mid fields of grain and fallows cool and 

hush 
Where gushed and thrilled the lark's wild 

rhapsody. 
Such halcyon peace and joy on earth ne'er 

reign, 
As o'er this wide domain love-consecrate. 
The sun-scorched pilgrim, at day's paling 

blush, 

291 



Hastened his eager steps the haven to 

gain; 
And here the outcast poor, in bliss elate, 
Their souls in ever-f ountful love refresh. 



No dearth was there, no want or rankling 

care, 
Save that still pain for mankind's deep 

distress, 
Dispelled with every glow of happiness 
That flushed o'er some heart rescued from 

despair,— 
Such grief as saddened e'er Christ's glor- 
ied face. 
The fruitage full and harvests copious 

grown 
Now heaped the granaries vast with rich 

excess. 
Those bow'rs of amaranth, in sweetest 

grace. 
Bloomed ever fair ; and pure as youth and 

dawn, 

That fadeless Eden glowed with loveli- 
ness. 

292 



Your riches are corrupted. Your gold and 
silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall 
be a witness against you. 

Morn's murky flood with night stains 
tainted deep 

Crept slowly o'er the rich man's palace 
drear 

And poured its sluggish streams o'er dome 
and wall. 

The miser rose dull-browed from tortur- 
ing sleep, 

Trembling with nameless, dream-imag- 
ined fear ; 

And when his gloating hands in wild em- 
brace 

Fondled his bags of golden treasure full. 

The plaguing voices of that dreamed de- 
spair 

Yet grided o'er his heart their venomed 
curse ; 

*^The canker of your gold consumes your 
soul." 



Soon, with amaze that turned his vulgar 
smile 

293 



To lowering frowns, his startled neighbors 
told, 

In eager haste, how, wrapped in gloom of 
morn, 

The aged poor, their lands and hovel vile 

Had vanished like a mist, where now the 
wold, 

Desert and wild, had changed to para- 
dise, — 

A glad domain whose vast extent adorn 

Fair mansions grand of some strange god- 
like mold, — 

Abode sublime of two whose youthful 
grace 

Thrilled with delight the realm so long 
forlorn. 



With curt reproach and livid envy's 

scowls 
They further told 'twas noised about the 

land 
The self -same pilgrim he had spurned in 

scorn, 
With warmth and cheer and meat these 

abject souls 

294 



Had welcomed, and with eager, anxious 
hand 

Attended every want. In gratitude. 

Departing when night's truant shades in 
morn 

Were barred with gray, he, with some 
viewless wand 

Of mystery and pow'r, their youth re- 
newed 

And their mean cot to mansions vast did 
turn. 



With scoffing mock'ry did the rich blas- 
pheme, 

Ajid ridicule with scorn the story wild. 

But while he scowled with taunting jeer 
and slur 

Upon the hast'ning throng's excited 
stream. 

The wonder dawned upon his mind de- 
filed 

With cynic disbelief in any good 

That unjust fortune brings the victimed 
poor: 

295 



Dawned, like the doom to captive soft-be- 
guiled 
With dreams of joy, until, awakened rude, 
He feels the crushing prison-walls ob- 
scure. 



In palls of gloom his dreamed felicity. 
The niggard started to behold the crowds 
All thronging toward the west in morning 

pale. 
Doubt strove with fear, while sullen hope's 

faint plea 
Sought vain to wreathe the dawning truth 

in shrouds 
Of unbelief. The narrow forehead burned ; 
The moveless heart throbs wild as fears 

prevail. 
He rushes out as though a thousand goads 
Forth drove him, as his grasping senses 

yearned 
With that famed wealth his void soul to 

regale. 



His frightened steed he mounts in sense- 
less haste, 

296 



And mingles with the throng ; though not 

as they, 
Rejoicing in the blessing free-bestowed, 
But with the bane of low remorse debased, 
And morbid with the pangs of dull dismay. 
With haughty, mocking mien he scowled 

in ire 
Upon the hope-exalted poor, subdued 
In wonderment and awe, with every ray 
That glinted from the sun's reflected fire, 
And 'er the radiant mansion flamed and 

glowed 



Flushing with tranquil cloud-like splen- 
dor rare. 

But soon the constant-goaded steed had 
passed 

The fretted boscage of the garden's bourn. 

And reached a gentle slope, where, con- 
toured clear 

Against the bright 'ning west, the mansion 
vast 

Arose and spread its still wings flecked 
with white 

297 



Far 'mid the haloed hues of hov'ring 

morn. 
There no dank walls of mucid stone o'er- 

cast 
Its flow'ry meadows, with their sombrous 

blight. 
The tranced eye, awe-charmed, might gaxe 

and yearn. 



As one demented sees some vision grand, 
And gapes in mute and moveless awe, — 

his soul. 
With wonder dumb, a chaos void of strife, 
So stares and gloats this man of wealth, 

his mind 
A senseless void where want and mock'ry 

roll,— 
Thoughtless as one lost in eternity. 
Long did he gaze, like one bereft of life, 
To sate his empty greed with gorgings full. 
At length the pow'r of dark reality 
O'er came his stolid mind with dull doubts 

rife. 

298 



As shimmers faint some distant, mist- 

paled star 
So hazed and dim it seems a flickering 

charm 
Cast o'er the quiv'ring eye, until it gleams 
Through glory-parted clouds, lustrous and 

far. 
So, o'er his mind enthralled in dire alarm, 
Shone silent those white splendors whose 

pure light, 
Burning across his soul its purging beams, 
Disclosed his envious greed that, like a 

swarm 
Of vipers, grew and feasted on the sight 
Of riches e'en unvisioned in his dreams. 



Like one whom some fierce, strange desire 

drives 
To chase o'er earth a fleeting vision bright 
That e'er eludes his grasp, so, eager fires 
Of ruthless craving goad him, while he 

strives 
To vanish doubt that leaves its searing 

blight 
In face distorted, wild and straining eyes. 

299 



His heedless sense a burning hope inspires 
To overtake the pilgrim, and, despite 
His heartless scorn of yesternight, obtain 
A gift to fill his gluttonous desires. 

The rash, blind folly of his quenchless 

greed 
Spurred on his frothing horse in headlong 

haste. 
His few friends marking the dilated eyes 
And rashness, greet him, but he gives no 

heed, 
Save to the pilgrim his strained eyes e'er 

traced 
Far- wand 'ring, fancy-fashioned to a god. 
Ever anew the stinging lash he plies ; 
Ever his ravenous looks he frowning cast 
Farther and farther o'er the whit'ning 

road, 
Nor to his shouted questions waits replies. 

He that getteth riches, and not by right, shall 
leave them in the midst of his days, and at 
his end shall be a fool. 

When noon's high glow fused white the 
azure pale 

300 



And flooded earth with trembling, hueless 
gleams, 

He found the wand'rer 'neath an olive- 
tree 

Whose drooping leaves cast o'er the hot- 
breathed soil 

Its waving shade checkered with orbed 
beams. 

Nor lingers, but with clutching hand, nigh 
crazed, 

And rash as if he grasped with jealous 
glee 

His sordid gold, he wakes from troubled 
dreams 

The wearied Christ. With honeyed words 
o'erglozed 

With lavish praise, his huge avidity 



He strives to hide; and tells in rasping 
tones. 

With grieved look, how he e'er helped the 
poor, 

Supplied their wants and gave them shel- 
ter free: 

And how a pilgrim, in the night just flown, 

301 



He had admitted to his bounty, sure 
That God would bless the deed ; but ere the 

morn, 
With all his treasure stolen secretly, 
Had fled : Christ did he sorrowful implore, 
With cringing tears, to bless him, so for- 
lorn. 
That he might ever friend to friendless 
be. 



As when in storm the raucous thunder's 
roar 

Has died upon the frenzied blast, and fair 

The bursting sunshine soft with mists in- 
wove 

The sky with gloried tints bright-arches 
o'er, — 

So died those griding tones; and on the 
air, 

Hush with the qui v 'ring thrill of near de- 
light. 

Like rhapsody soft-breathed by choirs 
above. 

The voice of Jesus hov'ring, grants the 
pray'r, 

302 



But warns the man that, all his power de- 
spite, 
Such monstrous craving only ill can prove. 



So great was his soul-ravishing delight 
He did not hear those words and warning 

tone. 
Nor aught did heed, save that wild imaged 

dream 
That swiftly thronged before his inward 

sight. 
Great heaps of gold, yellow as evening's 

sun 
As high and vast as Heav'n's infinity 
He sees, 'mid which he reigns in joy su- 
preme. 
E'er grasping all about his regal throne 
In one endless embrace, — felicity 
To his joy-maddened soul dazed in the 
gleam 



Of fiery, wild desire. Without adieus. 
He turns his wearied horse toward home 
again, 

303 



Confused with struggling hope and fear 

lest fate 
Should somehow rob him of his chance to 

choose, 
Before the pow'r God gave him to obtain 
Whatever he asked, should sudden pass 

away. 
His mind e'er failed his glutton greed to 

sate 
With visions great and rich as heaven's 

domain. 
The specters of Suspense in fierce array 
With faith in combat raged, — a horrid 

state 



In which his soul, fell-driven to dismay. 

Raved wildly in the toils of sweet despair. 

Then Hydra-headed Doubt, with demon- 
bane. 

That searched 'mid mocking tortures for 
its prey, 

Devoured apace his dreams of rapture 
fair, 

And laughed to taunting scorn his frantic 
ire. 

304 



Disputes and queries racked Ms striving 
brain, 

Until, with joy and hope, with fear and 
care 

And strife to glut the monster of desire, 

His shrivelled mind was driven nigh in- 
sane. 

While in bewildered plight he hurried on, 
Scarce knowing where his thwarted 

thoughts would lead 
That groped 'mid massy throngs of 

wealth's delight, 
A starving wight approached to cringe 

and fawn 
Beneath his horse's hoofs, — to gasp and 

plead 
For food and help, in tones of piteous 

grief 

That Nature trembled at the woeful sight. 

His wife and child, poor victims of 
wealth's greed, 

Lay helpless 'neath fierce hunger's gnaw- 
ing strife ; 

And he alone, though fever's conqu'ring 
blight 

305 



Consumed his struggling pow'r, still 

strove to save 
His loved ones from the grasp of awful 

doom. 
Oh, could he yet withstand that groan and 

tear, 
To whom the Lord such wealth and power 

gave ? — 
Oh, could he see them borne to lowly 

tomb, — 
The helpless prey of hideous vulture- 
lust, — 
And not within his murderous heart some 

fear 
Of God's own judgment feel for crimes, 

from Whom 
His pompous might and wealth he held in 

trust 
To bless the poor with warmth and food 

and cheer ? 



Ah, yes! Though soulful Nature with 

him wept. 
Deaf, heartless wealth could only scowl 

and sneer. 

306 



The rich man's impulse was to whip his 

steed 
On past the prostrate form that grovling 

crept 
And grasped the stirrup in imploring fear. 
But venomed guilt and dread in crushing 

surge, 
Lest Christ should curse to naught his 

promised meed, 
O 'ercame his sullen soul ; the dire despair 
Of sobful tone and desperate clutch did 

urge 
His frantic sense the wretch's pray'r to 

heed. 



In angry haste a little coin he seized 
And scoffing, threw it in the beggar's face : 
Then turning, urged his steed with threat 

and lash. 
Nigh frenzied with desire he vain ap- 
peased 
With dreams that failed to fill his mean 

embrace. 
But sudden, 'mid his thought's distracted 
course, 

307 



A dark suspicion rose, — a trembling flash 
Of doubt and dread. His dreams of golden 

grace 
In horror fled. He madly clutched his 

purse, — 
His money counted ; then with curses rash 



Bewailed his fate: for ^4n his pity kind 
And weak compassion he had thrown away 
A precious piece of gold! grievous 

fate, — 
O weakness mean that moved his mercy 

bUnd 
To give to beggars!^' He reviled the day 
That brought him thither ; and his ragings 

dire, 
Embittered in the violence of hate 
'Gainst God and man, impelled him to be- 
tray 
His very life, for in his senseless ire 
He cursed himself and all his luckless 
state. 

308 



Scarce had the bitter, poisoned words been 

breathed 
Than o'er his sense weird spells of mad- 
ness reign. 
As some fell pow'r of long-endured de- 
spair, 
With hope and faith in raving combat 

wreathed, 
Doth surge and ebb with venom in its bane 
Or like impassioned love too sudden hurled 
Where foul suspicion's subtle demons 

fare 
In blinded rage, until the anguished brain 
Drifts helpless in a vast chaotic world 
Of dismal joy, of dark and frantic care, — 



So passed the tortured soul to that weird 

realm, 
Betrayed by self to vile greed dedicate. 
And what strange visioned dreams and 

phantom-shades, 
And what revealing mysteries o'erwhelm 
The spirit, can no hiunan art relate. 
But when, like some dread charm, doth 

pass that spell, 

309 



Whose host of sprites and fleeting beings 
fades, 

His mind recovers feebly from that 
state, — 

His soul is rescued from that writhing 
Hell, 

And borne to life on wings fair sleep out- 
spreads. 

When he awoke, convulsed with doubt and 
fear. 

Dazed in the world of images and dreams. 

He stared with startled wonder on the 
scene, — 

The strange reality devoid and drear 

That mingled 'neath the daylight's glar- 
ing gleams 

With ghostly mem'ries of the fading past. 

And as the sun burns through the haze of 
dawn. 

And pours o'er misted earth its golden 
streams. 

There swept with lucid, bright 'ning flow 
at last, 

The flood of truth swift o 'er his vague cha- 
grin. 

310 



4 desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a 
land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth 
any son of man pass thereby. 

He gazed about dismayed. His horse was 

gone: 
Ah, see his garments rich now stained and 

torn, 
And in his eager grasp his empty purse ! 
A thrill of pain flushed o'er his features 

wan. 
The blow had fallen o'er his hopes forlorn. 
Of riches and possessions naught was left. 
Fulfilled by God had been that awful curse 
Which monstrous greed within his soul 

had sworn. 
And crushed with grief, of shattered pride 

bereft, 
His home he sought, tortured with wild 

remorse. 



And when his fait 'ring steps had reached 

the spot 
Where once his stately mansion with its 

halls, 

311 



Its domes and tow'rs, its gardens fair, did 
rear 

Its vain magnificence, existed naught 

But sterile, stony slopes and chasmy walls, 

And sun-burnt steeps, — a wilderness of 
dread. 

Where Death and Ruin kept their reign 
severe 

In wilds accursed, and wreathed their 
haunted palls 

'er waste and void ; while fiends of Hor- 
ror fed 

Hate's demons with the tortures of de- 
spair. 



The people gathered 'round in wond'ring 
throng. 

Awed with the mighty justice of their 
King, 

Could not but praise Him for that recom- 
pense 

To one so guilty judged of crime and 
wrong. 

And e'er that great commandment warn- 
ing rang : 

312 



^'For Thou Shalt Love!" Dimly, as in a 

dream, 
The giiilty saw and heard; and from the 

glance 
Of once-despised serfs, a trembling thing, 
Crushed with remorse and choked with 

burning shame, 
He slunk abased in utter indigence. 

Incline your ear and come unto me: hear, and 
your soul shall live; and I will make an 
everlasting covenant with you. 

Unknown and scrip tless o'er the stony 

road 
He wandered, sighing in the bitterness 
Of dire remorse and wrath against his 

fate. 
While ever nigh, conviction's burning 

goad 
Impelled his soul for moments to confess 
His horrid guilt. Yet would he not repent, 
Though ever o'er his mind's confused 

state 
That word, whose virtue he could not re- 
press, 
Whose meaning he had scorned without 
lament, — 

313 



''For thou shalt love," — pained like a tor- 
ment sweet. 

Thus on he aimless fared until the night 

Her black and chilling blight spread ruth- 
less o'er: 

Nor did he rouse from that distracted state 

Until the radiance o'er his startled sight 

Burst forth in floods from out that haven 
fair 

Whose portals, opened wide upon the 
gloom. 

Wreathed out their haloed gladness con- 
secrate 

To lead the wand'rer welcome to its 
cheer, — 

That mansion blest where Heaven's joys 
illume 

The wondrous realm in God's own love 
create. 

Athrill in softened lustre's tender flow. 
Those thronging, sculptured beauties, an- 
gel-wrought. 
That burned with tranquil glory through 
the night, 

314 



Engraved their meanings flushed in Heav- 
en 's glow 

Deep on his wond'ring soul, o'er whose 
dark thought 

Their silent pow'r a mighty impulse 
thrilled. 

Long years had passed since last his en- 
vious sight 

Had rested scowling on that scene, fresh- 
fraught 

With Heaven's love, yet time had scarce 
fulfilled, 

In human speech, a single day's swift 
flight. 



As one, by some resistless spirit led. 

Wanders half -listless through the mystic 
night. 

Where mighty grief is hushed in wonder 
still,— 

His willing feet the threshold aimless 
tread. 

Those earth-born angels, beaming with de- 
light 

315 



And thrilled with love, warm-clasped his 

nerveless hand, 
In anxious welcome from the night and 

chill; 
And led him where soft cheer and peace 

invite, 
And languors sweet with rest-beguiling 

wand 
To dreamless sleep the weary sense be- 

gile. 



When morn at last forth-burst with radi- 
ance vast. 
And birds' and airs' and fountains' joy- 
ous strain 
Hymned ever ^^Love, O, mighty Love," 

and thrill 
And glow of angel-art about him cast 
Deep on his heart its rapturous design, — 
He, scarce partaking of the simple fare 
Prepared by loving hands, with guideless 

will 
Now wanders on, while o 'er his dark dis- 
dain 

316 



Those spirit-tones throbbed through his 
anguished care, — 

Those love-strains dear that grief to si- 
lence still. 



Thus on he heedless strayed, dazed in the 

blaze 
Of glorious day, too bright for rankling 

care 
That sought its natural home in gloom and 

night. 
His mind bewildered, struggling through 

the maze 
Of hope and hate, of sorrow and despair. 
For respite yearned from mute remorse 

and pain, 
Unconscious as a flower seeks the light : 
But no invented charms, or wonders rare 
Of false belief, no mocking shams profane. 
Can save the soul from evil's deadly blight. 

Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to 
love one another. God is love; and he that 
dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God. 

Hast thou once felt love's chastening of 
soul, 

317 



Or known the fining fire's relentless pain? 
When thou the grief of myriad ills hast 

borne, 
Suffered the pangs of want, the loss of all 
That dear doth seem, — endured the crush- 
ing bane 
Of heartless scorn, and known the bitter 

woe, 
The writhing anguish of a soul forlorn 
Of trusting love by poisoned treach'ry 

slain, 
Then art thou fit to love and be and do, 
Tranquil to face earth's night or Heaven's 
morn. 



And if, companionless, through night and 

gloom 
Thou toilest sad, the burning of a star, 
Or Nature's spirit voice, the forms divine 
Of loveliness about thee, o'er thy doom 
Will cast a veiling charm, a magic fair 
To dumb thy pain with beauty; while the 

light 
Of rescue through thy sorrowed night doth 

shine, — 

318 



A light from thine own passion, — till afar 
Thy path of dread doth glow with glory 

bright, — 
The last, the triumph-ecstasy of pain. 



So plods the pilgrim on through rainbowed 
light 

Of morn too joyous, while Love's holy 
hymn 

By Nature breathed, heard in yon rap- 
tured fane, 

Soft thrilled its tones o'er dark contri- 
tion's might. 

To one sin-cursed how woeful life doth 
seem. 

Who once the frenzied bliss of happy love. 

Or tranced form of beauty in its reign 

Of perfect grace has known: that reach- 
less dream, 

That hovers viewless in some realm above, 

His soul enslaved can ne'er again attain. 



Ah, dark and cold the long and weary 
years, 

319 



Adown whose pathway, rough with pain 

and throe, 
To reach that height he still must strug- 
gle on. 
Where visioned Love her throne of glory 

rears ! 
Ah, with what trying recompense of woe, 
What secret suffering of redeeming pain, 
What infinite atonement Heaven's plan 
Doth purge that soul in abject evil low, 
And purify of mammon's reeking stain 
The self -exalted vanities of man ! 



A weary wight despised he must crouch 

Prom scorned poor, and beg his daily 
bread 

Prom door to door ; and when night 's ray- 
less chiU 

Crept o'er his quiv'ring nerves, a lowly 
couch 

He wretched sought in humble stall or 
shed. 

Alone, approachless in his mute despair. 

He wandered far to learn the cold world's 

ill, 

320 



The agonies of hunger and the dread 
Of sickness and disaster, toil and care ; 
The pang of scorn and mock'ry's venom 
feel. 



A herdsman he became and fed the swine, 
And oft in hunger's sheer distress he fain 
Would have consumed the husks on which 

they fed. 
He labored in the fields till the decline 
Of summer's sun, and reaped the golden 

grain 
With bruised, tender hands; the wine- 
press drear 
Till settling night his weary feet did tread ; 
Or in the vineyard moiled his hire to gain, 
And earn his scanty fare and slumber's 

cheer : 
The toiler's sleep became his only meed. 

Blessed is the man whom Thou chasteneth, O 
Lord, and teachest him out of Thy law; that 
Thou mayest give him rest from the days of 
adversity. 

And when the sun to realms receding fair 
Par in the golden south, the drooping leaf 

321 



Kissed soft in mellow flush whose tender 

wane 
Glowed paler o 'er the olive 's tumid sphere, 
By night and day he toiled in sighing grief, 
With rude device to press the savory oil 
The purpled olive's fracid orbs contain. 
Thus passed the dreary seasons, — no re- 
lief 
With their mutation bringing to his soul 
Which love could learn alone through an- 
guished pain. 



Yet as the years rolled on in silent wane, 

In waking dreams and visions fair by 
night, 

Love's holy hymn he heard thrill o'er his 
woes, 

Beheld its glory glowing through his pain. 

And 'twas with joy he saw that image 
bright, 

And heard those strains sweet as remem- 
bered dream. 

At last, unconscious as the dawn, arose 

His soul, restored with suff 'ring infinite, 

322 



To mighty, universal Love, that reigned 

supreme, 
An impulse sweet whose tender passion 

glows 



In every thought and act. ^^Oh, that my 
pow'r, 

A crimef ul sacrifice to self and greed, 

Might be restored, that to the suff 'ring 
poor 

I all might dedicate, — their well-earned 
dow'r!" 

That mighty love became his only creed. 

That great desire his only joy and pray'r. 

And e'er amid his toil did he implore 

Of God, the Sovereign Love, that single 
meed 

For whose delight death's pangs he glad 
would bear. 

Could Heaven e'er such mighty love ig- 
nore? 



The chills of winter passed, and glowing 
spring 

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O 'erflushed the teeming earth with wealth 
supreme, 

And summer's ample harvest, brimming 
o'er 

With golden grain and fruits, was mellow- 
ing? 

When o'er the land, as though on autumn's 

gleam. 
There spread the fame of One, a Naza- 

rene, 
Whose wondrous pow'r God-given could 

restore 
The sick to health, the maimed to strength, 

redeem 
The soul from death, and make whole all 

unclean. 
The people from the Galilean shore 



In thousands followed, whom He healed 

and blessed. 
^^The Son of God," "the Savior of the 

Lost," 
They called Him, ^^Best beloved and Sent 

of God." 

324 



With holy awe that thrilled with mighty 
zest, 

The poor wight heard the story of the 
Christ ; 

And ere the break of day his couch did 
leave ; 

In ardent haste the long, rough way he 
trod. 

Ne'er faltering, though hunger's pangs ex- 
haust 

His strength, till on Capernaum's strand 
at eve 

He stood in confidence before the Lord. 



''Thou Great Eedeemer, Holy One of 

God," 
He fervently implored, ''Oh, hear my 

pray'r: 
Oh, look upon the soul Thy Love doth 

purge,— 
The soul Thy Holy Passion hath imbued. 
And to my life my lost estate restore. 
That I might serve the victimed poor, and 

share 

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